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GARTH, 
ABLE SEAMAN 








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He jibed the AiJouros again 


















I 


GARTH, 
ABLE SEAMAN 

BY 

EDITH BALLINGER |>RICE 

Author of “Silver Shoal Light,” “The Fortune of the 
Indies,” “The Happy Venture,” “Blue Magic,” etc. 

/ 

ILLUSTRATED BY 
THE AUTHOR 



THE CENTURY CO. 
New York and London 
1923 








Copyright, 1923, by 
The Centuky Co. 





Cl A 7117 7 9 


- 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 




SEP -7 ’23 


AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 

TO 

E. M. S. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I School and Symphonies .... 3 

II Enter Celia.16 

i . j 

III Celia Is Unimpressed.27 

IV A Confession and a Decision ... 34 

V Being a Chapter of Letters ... 46 

VI Sick-Bay.55 

VII Impasse.68 

VIII Some Trifling Presentations ... 80 

IX Peace.87 

X Joy in the Morning.94 

XI Silver Shoal Summons.103 

XII The Good Ships’ Anchorage . . . 123 

XIII The Pleasant Outlook.138 

XIV Miss Esther Robinson.154 

XV Mariner’s Joy.170 

XVI The Whispering-Post.189 

XVII Celia Sails.200 

XVIII A Fall and a Find.212 

XIX The Secret of the Stair .... 218 
XX Garth Pemberley, A. B.229 


















LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


He jibed the Ailouros again . . . Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

“You must remember!”.74 


“That ain’t fiddlin’—that’s violinin’ ” . . . 120 


“It does sound hollow!” 


222 





GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 


SHIP OF DREAMS 


There never grew the tall oak 
That fashioned her stately beam, 

Save in the forest of faerie, 

Under the hills of dream. 

Her sails are spun of phosphor, 

Weft of the Pleiads’ shine, 

And she gleams like a mountain of moonlight 
From her truck to her water-line. 

But only one may see her, 

And only one may know 
The thrill of her perfect answer, 

When the scented trade-winds blow. 

Under the high poop lantern, 

Silent I see him stand, 

With his steady eyes on the sea-line 
And the wheel beneath his hand. 

And over the tilt of her moon-sail 
There hangs one mystic star, 

Pointing her down to the waters 
Where the Wonderful Islands are. 


GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

CHAPTER I 

SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 

G ABTH PEMBERLEY tossed his head 
back and slid one finger between his Eton 
collar and his chin. The first action removed 
every vestige of a side-parting from his curly, 
bronze-colored hair; the insertion of the finger 
somewhat relieved the persistent scrape of the 
Eton collar. The collar was a new dignity, 
and an uncomfortable one. As far back as 
Garth could remember he had worn blue sailor 
jumpers that left his tanned throat open to the 
sea wind and the salt fog. This white linen 
atrocity was something quite outside his ex¬ 
perience. But clothes which are altogether suit¬ 
able when worn at a lighthouse on a rock are 
not permissible for a lower school boy at St. 
Hubert’s. A far greater dignity than the col¬ 
lar was the “St.H.” in a gold shield which 
Garth was entitled to wear upon his cap, and 

3 


4 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

it was necessary that the rest of his clothes 
should be in keeping with that. 

Though his geography book lay open before 
him, Garth did not look at it. His mind had 
slipped away from his surroundings, until the 
roar of New York outside the school-room win¬ 
dows became the crash of breakers on the Reef; 
he could almost hear the gulls crying above 
Silver Shoal. He saw it much more clearly 
than the row of desks before him—Silver Shoal 
Light, which had been his home for all that he 
could remember of his eight and a half years. 
The white, squarely built house clinging to the 
gray rock, the creeping foam about the ledge, 
the Ailouros —their own dear cat-boat—swing¬ 
ing at her moorings off the pier. He bent 
• 

quickly over the geography book, for the new 
dignity forbade tears—and the Ailouros had 
been sold. 

The lesson was concerned with the ports of 
the Atlantic coast, but the book had opened 
of its own accord at a review list of names— 
magic names that were sufficient to set Garth 
off upon an entirely new train of thought. Cal¬ 
lao, Mozambique, Taltal, Bilbao, Iquique, Rio 
de Oro. These were names he had heard time 
and again, ports to which he had voyaged in 


SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 5 

fancy commanding a fair-sailed barkantine. 
The stories his father had told him, the tales in 
the books his father had written, were full of 
these names and others as fascinating. He 
could almost remember some of the earliest of 
the stories—those that his father had narrated 
as they lay side by side on the lighthouse land¬ 
ing, when Garth was still too weak to sit up. 
(The crutches at his side spoke the effect of 
that devastating illness even now.) Tales of 
ships, they all had been—tall ships, full- 
rigged, and with fair canvas spread to 
the trades. Sailing-vessels, always, yet his 
father was at that very moment aboard a steam¬ 
ship : Lieutenant J. E. Pemberley, third in com¬ 
mand of Destroyer 026. Garth felt in his 
pocket and drew out a thin, foreign envelope. 
The geography book shielded his action, as geo¬ 
graphy books have done since time immemorial. 
He spread the sheet before him on the desk 
and read it slowly for the twentieth time. It 
was in his father’s swift, clear hand, and bore 
no date—the first letter since he went to sea: 

? Somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-sea ? 

? Some time A. d. ? 

My dearest Pern: 

I got your letter, and Mudder’s, just before we 



6 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

lost touch with the world, and they lie before me 
now as I write. I am writing in the ward-room be¬ 
cause it ’s cold, and I have a piece of toast in my port 
hand. Thus I am accomplishing two things at once, 
and they are both things I want to do. I am de¬ 
tailed to the bridge in fifteen minutes so this won’t 
be a very long letter. I wonder if you’d like to be 
beside me up there—all hooded in by a steel roof; 
the Captain staring out through a loophole; a sailor 
repeating his orders through to the engine-room; 
seas crashing up over the nose of the destroyer, and 
the thrum-thrum of the big turbines filling every¬ 
thing. You would like it, I think, old blue-water 
sailor though you are. I suppose you ’ll write back, 
“No, never, never! I want wind whistling through 
the shrouds, and the foreto’gallant slatting itself to 
pieces in a nor’easter!” But this is a different sort 
of exciting. Not so beautiful, perhaps, but just as 
thrilling. Especially when you know that there are 
—that perhaps there are—submarines waiting for you 
out there in the night. We ’ve had one or two ad¬ 
ventures already which I mustn’t write about, but 
they were very interesting. 

Your old friend the Billington turns out to be our 
mother-ship. Remember how you and Joan —Aunt 
Joan I suppose I ought to say—spied at her signals 
with the glass for hours ? . . . I had to stop to go on 
duty then, but now I ’ll add just a word before I 
turn in—it’s two o’clock in the morning! It was 
nice on deck. Not a glimmer of light except from the 
stars, which shone like blue points. Far off there was 



SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 7 

just the faintest gleam from the coast, and a dim 
trail of paler darkness behind us from the churn¬ 
ing foam of our wake. In the wireless-room blue 
sparks were sputtering as urgent orders for us came 
in from space. We ’re off, somewhere, and I don’t 
know when I shall post this. I wonder how it goes 
at St. Hubert’s. I’m glad I was spared the sorrow 
of seeing you in civilian clothes. I’d rather think 
of you in good salty blue denim. Don’t forget to 
draw the plans of a boat for me once in a while,—and 
most of all, don’t forget your poor old 

Fogger. 

The new dignity had also forbidden the use 
of such childish names as “Fogger” and 44 Mud- 
der.” Other lower school youths talked of 
“Dad”; so Garth spoke also of “Dad” as con¬ 
vincingly as he could. But “Fogger” it re¬ 
mained in Garth’s thoughts of him, change- 
lessly. The thoughts were very frequent. He 
could remember the departure now with a 
steady lip. How very tall Fogger had looked, 
and how different in his new uniform with gold 
on the cuff and a foul anchor and bars on the 
collar! He had caught Garth up in his arms 
till his own tawny head was on a level with 
Garth’s face. And the very last word he had 
whispered was, “Bemember!” 

Garth had not been quite sure, at that heart- 




\ 


8 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

breaking moment, what it was that he was to 
remember, but later he knew well enough. He 
was not to forget some of the things Fogger had 
said on that day when Garth first learned that 
they could not stay at the lighthouse forever. 

44 You want to be a sea-captain, and you can’t 
be; but you can help me to be one.” 44 I shall 
be on the bridge of a destroyer; your quarter¬ 
deck will be a room in town.” 44 There are 
other things just as fine as being a sea-captain; 
things that take just as much grit. Are you go¬ 
ing to show me that you have it ? 9 9 

Garth remembered exactly how the room had 
looked—Fogger and Mudder’s room at the 
lighthouse, with the afternoon sunshine pour¬ 
ing in across its smooth old floor through the 
deep windows. He applied himself in earnest 
to the Atlantic seaports, but the letters blurred 
and danced. Unfortunately for his studying, 
also, the margin of the page was decorated by 
a picture of a square-rigged ship, drawn in pen¬ 
cil. It was a much better drawing than might 
be imagined, considering the age of the artist, 
but Garth was not satisfied with the set of the 
maintopgallantsail. He changed it carefully, 
and also added a highly ornamental pennant 
at the main truck, in red pencil. This was all 


SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 9 

so absorbing that be went to his class still 
dreaming, and when a distant voice suddenly 
remarked: 

“Pemberley, yon may name the principal 
Atlantic seaports from Maine to New Jersey,” 
he answered, without rising: 

“Taltal, Iquique, and Callao.’’ 

The master kept him, later, for an explana¬ 
tion. 

“I was thinking about those other ports,” 
Garth told him, ‘ ‘ because you see you ’re apt 
to touch there in the coastwise trade—sir.” 

The “sir” was always an afterthought. The 
master did not seem entirely satisfied with the 
explanation, but when Garth recited a correct 
list of Atlantic ports, concluding with a smile 
of irresistible quality, he shook his head and 
said: 

“Dismissed, Pemberley.” 

Garth put on the cap with “St.H.” on the 
peak, and buttoned his reefer tightly against 
the December wind. Out in the stone court be¬ 
fore St. Hubert’s a crowd of boys lingered; 
knots of tall upper school youths exchanging 
notes on gymnasium proceedings; lower school 
small fry—some of the littlest being escorted 
home by mothers or governesses. Garth came 



10 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

down the steps, looking expectantly toward the 
street. The crutches had ceased to attract no¬ 
tice, and he passed almost unobserved between 
his school-fellows. A lanky fifth form boy, who 
had, for some reason, taken it upon himself to 
champion Garth, clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Well, so long, till after the hols,” he said, 
and Garth realized for the first time that school 
was* breaking up for the Christmas vacation. 
A vista of happy, idle mornings, and long 
evenings in which to design boats, opened out 
before him entrancingly. 

At the great iron gates waited a figure with 
face half buried in a muff. 

“Joan!” Garth cried to her in surprise as 
he swung down the step, for he had expected 
his mother. 

He could never remember to call her Aunt 
Joan. When you have taken in a person, home¬ 
less for the moment, lived with her for months 
in the close quarters of a lighthouse, adored her 
and called her by her first name—then if she 
suddenly goes and marries your uncle, how can 
you possibly remember that she’s your aunt? 

She flung out an arm to sweep him into her 
embrace, then stopped short—possibly at sight 
of the Eton collar. Despite the past three 



SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 11 


months she could not grow used to these “ shore 
clothes.’’ His face was so unchanged, even to 
the mellow tan which New York winter had 
failed to lessen, the gray eyes that always re¬ 
minded her of the sea were so exactly the same 
as before, that she could never become accus¬ 
tomed to seeing him without a background of 
wind-swept sky and flying spray. 

“Did you know I’m through with school un¬ 
til—oh, until next year?” he said, as they 
walked to Fifth Avenue. 

“To be sure, it will be another year, won’t 
it?” she agreed. “But indeed I knew that 
vacation had begun. That’s why we ’re cele¬ 
brating.” 

“What?” begged Garth. “I don’t think 
you ’re a nice aunt, not to tell me. ’ ’ 

Any chance of her telling him was cut off by 
the necessity of hailing a bus. 

“Can’t we go on top?” Garth pleaded. 

“In the middle of December!” Joan ex¬ 
claimed with a shiver. “Oh, well, now I think 
of it, we’ve such a little way to go that I dare 
say it won’t permanently freeze us.” 

The ascent of Fifth Avenue bus stairs is 
something of an acrobatic feat, even for peo¬ 
ple with what Garth called “good sea-legs.” 



12 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

The conductor solved it for him by carrying 
him bodily to the top, despite the imposing 
“St.H.” Established in the front seat, Garth 
demanded: 

“What did you mean by its being such a 
little way? All the way from here up Eiverside 
and home is awfully far. ” 

“We ’re not going home,” Joan explained. 
“We ’re going to drop off in a minute and have 
a bite at one of these Tea Cozy or Toasted 
Crumpet places along here. I have tickets for 
the symphony this afternoon.” 

A city full of people and a gold shield on the 
cap are very hampering things. They pre¬ 
vented Garth, for instance, from flinging his 
arms about his aunt and shouting aloud his ap¬ 
preciation of her plans. The top of a bus 
is such a very exposed spot. Suppose that a 
sixth form St. Hubertian should be coming 
out of a side street! Garth found one of Joan’s 
hands inside her muff, however, and squeezed it 
very hard. The muff was, he discovered, much 
warmer than the surrounding atmosphere of 
Fifth Avenue, and so he left his hand there 
and Joan held it tightly. 

The great concert-hall was filling gradually 
as they entered it. Their seats were in the 


SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 13 

front row of the balcony; Garth planted his 
elbows on the broad rail, dropped his chin in 
his hands, and gazed at the stage. It was his 
first concert—his first real music, for until now 
he had heard nothing but his father’s swinging 
sea-songs, and later Joan’s fitful melodies on 
the studio piano. He could never have imag¬ 
ined that so many people could make music 
all together. In little groups the musicians 
were straggling in, some carrying violins, some 
bearing great horns that glittered. The dou¬ 
ble-basses which leaned at the back of the 
stage like great unwieldy creatures (elephant 
violins, thought Garth) were being claimed by 
their players, who tested the strings with little 
muffled pluckings. One man bent over the big 
copper kettledrums, tweaking first one and then 
another small handle, laying his ear close to 
the drumheads as if to catch a whispered se¬ 
cret. All the instruments were playing soft 
little tunes to themselves—runs and trills and 
snatches of melody; Garth wondered how they 
could all play at once, possibly. But they 
stopped^ suddenly, as a ripple of applause an¬ 
nounced the entrance of the conductor. He 
raised a little stick in his hand; it clicked 
sharply as he tapped it against his music-desk. 


14 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Then—oh, wonderful!—four notes, tremendous 
and beautiful; the impressive opening phrase 
of the Fifth Symphony, striking sternly across 
the dying rustle of programs. 

Joan had played parts of it often to Garth 
on the piano and had tried to explain to him a 
little of its meaning—the struggle of the soul 
against Fate, and its final triumph. He had 
understood more of her explanation than she 
imagined, -and had fashioned for himself a 
quaint little philosophy from it. The music 
poured about him like a great wind. The 
violins wailed, the flutes leaped an octave 
higher; then the great triumphal burst, cour¬ 
age and conquest. Garth raised his head feel¬ 
ing—somewhat bewildered—rather as if Fog- 
ger had said to him, 6 ‘ Remember!” 

But there was something as wonderful still 
to hear. Joan indicated upon the program, 
“The Sea and Sindbad’s Ship.” That great, 
mournful, desolate theme! It had all that was 
beautiful in the storm at Silver Shoal, all that 
was noble in the shout of the wind around the 
tower. ‘ ‘ The Ship goes to pieces on a Rock sur¬ 
mounted by the Bronze Statue of a Horse¬ 
man.” There was the ship, struggling, toss¬ 
ing, fainter, fainter; and nothing then but the 


SCHOOL AND SYMPHONIES 15 


sea, ancient, tragic, beautiful, beating on an 
age-old crag. 

Garth’s face was hidden on his arm. He 
dared not open his eyes, for he knew that in 
reality a brightly lit concert-hall lay about him 
and not the awful splendor of the sea. He 
wanted, for a moment more, to think that he 
stood with Fogger on the gallery of Silver 
Shoal Light, a wild wind in his hair and on his 
face. He said nothing at all until he and Joan 
were more than half-way home inside a bus. 
Then he remarked, suddenly: 

“ Joan, I’m going to play one of those vio¬ 
lins, and make the music that was about the 


CHAPTER II 


ENTER CELIA 

G ARTH was extremely glad to be out of 
school. It was a very good school, and he 
was greatly interested in many of the things 
he studied there, particularly geography, which 
informed you of distant lands, and mathemat¬ 
ics—which Fogger said you had to know 
through and through if you wanted to build 
ships. But Garth had passed all that he could 
remember of his life in an offshore lighthouse 
with two sensible and understanding grown peo¬ 
ple. The clamorous mob at St. Hubert’s lay as 
entirely outside his experience as though he had 
been a mer-child. 

The day of his arrival—school had been open 
for several weeks—he wore an English sailor- 
suit and addressed the headmaster in en¬ 
gagingly confidential tones whenever the fancy 
struck him. Add to this the crutches and the 
glint of steel at his ankle beneath the long trou¬ 
sers of the English sailor-suit, and the sum 

16 






ENTER CELIA 


17 


total was enough to set him apart at once as 
decidedly out of the way. St. Hubert’s stared 
but it did not snicker, and in a short time he had 
won a distinction all his own. When the lower 
school discovered—as it very soon did—that he 
had lived until two weeks before at a lighthouse, 
he became more sought after than he had any 
desire for. His real knowledge of ships and 
their ways made even a few upper school youths 
exchange tolerant words with him. The fact 
that his father—besides having kept the light¬ 
house—wrote books that were printed, and was 
now a lieutenant in the navy “and going to be 
an admiral soon,” as his son put it, all accrued 
in Garth’s favor. The favor rather abashed 
him, for he was not used in the least to blowing 
his own horn nor to having it blown for him. 
St. Hubert’s accepted him finally as a decided 
asset, and gave him friendly hints as to school 
ways in general. 

Yes, St. Hubert’s, as a whole, was friendly, 
but its general knowledge of things nautical 
was appallingly slender. And there were too 
many boys, quite too many for anything. Why, 
Garth decided, he might as well live on Bird 
Rock, in the middle of a whole flotilla of gab¬ 
bling herring-gulls. So that he looked forward 


18 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

to the holidays for many reasons. If Fogger 
were only at home it would be perfect. Uncle 
Rob Sinclair, nice as he was, couldn’t be like 
Fogger. 

Uncle Rob’s studio was by far the biggest 
room in the apartment. The other rooms clus¬ 
tered around it like little barnacles on an oys¬ 
ter-shell. It was full of unexpected and de¬ 
lightful comers where a person could sprawl 
unseen to read or draw boats. And there was 
such material for boat drawing, too! Uncle 
Rob was most prodigal with his ends of sketch- 
blocks and good pencils. He even permitted 
attempts at oil-painting, but these were so 
ghastly to behold that their perpetrator gave 
up this branch of art and returned to divid¬ 
ers and drawing-board. 

But on this second evening of the holidays 
Garth was not designing nor measuring. For 
Joan had come to sit between the candles and 
play 44 The Volga Boat Song,” and that was 
enough to make Garth forget half-breadth plans 
and live for a time in an heroic world dimly lit 
by the candle-light upon his aunt’s hair. The 
light shone also, though he did not know it, upon 
his own hair and into his earnest eyes. His 
mother knew it, and put down her work to gaze 


ENTER CELIA 19 

at him and to wonder at the look that was so 
much like Jim’s, and yet so wholly his own. 

Robert Sinclair, who had laid aside his 

• 

brushes when the candles were brought in, sat 
in a dim corner smoking a long pipe. In the 
absence of Fogger’s utterly satisfying arm, 
Uncle Rob’s was not bad, and thither Garth 
went to curl into the clasp of it. He was not 
sure that L^ncle Rob understood about things, 
quite, and yet -he had painted the Ship of 
Dreams; he must understand. For that was 
the ship that Garth would never command, the 
stately silver-sailed square-rigger that filled his 
heart. And Uncle Rob had painted her just 
as she should be, looming along out of a gray 
mist, and he had given the picture to Garth on 
his birthday, last summer, before they left 
Silver Shoal. So he must understand, a little. 
And now, when Garth shivered—a small ec¬ 
static thrill—as the song of the Volga boat¬ 
men rolled somberly, there was a quick respond¬ 
ing pressure of Uncle Rob’s arm. 

Garth watched the coal in the long pipe fade 
and glow, a little detached star near his uncle’s 
lap. He stared at a candle flame till it blurred 
into a multicolored nimbus floating in the twi¬ 
light; stared till it became the calm flooding 



20 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

beam of Silver Shoal Light, pointing down the 
seas. The chords boomed more resonantly, 
now faintlier. They were the wave voices 
against the rock below his window—were they? 
A distant voice said: 

‘ ‘ No, is he really asleep, Rob ? Poor old man! 
I ’m rather glad school’s over with for a bit. ’ ’ 

Christmas came and went—an exciting epi¬ 
sode for Garth of hitherto unknown experi¬ 
ences. The fishing-village of Quimpaug had 
not offered many holiday attractions. A mod¬ 
estly decked little juniper-tree, cut on the main¬ 
land, had always stood in the corner of the 
Silver Shoal living-room, its tiny candle flames 
reflected in the black pane. It had meant a 
sober, happy time, with the Christmas star to 
look at above the near star of the Light, and a 
candle set in the eastward window to guide the 
Christ-child if He should chance to fare by 
sea. 

But here were glittering gay rows of lighted 
shops, and rushing crowds, holly-sprigged; all 
the gaudy panoply of New York on holiday, 
tempered that year in its selfishness by the 
needs of the wounded and the cry of the orphans 
overseas. But it was a gay enough city, and 


ENTER CELIA 


21 


Garth marveled at it. There was, too, splen¬ 
did solemn singing in the great half-finished 
cathedral, and afterward merriment in the stu¬ 
dio, and many gifts, and this time the Christ¬ 
mas star above the blue star of the service-flag 
at the window. 

It was after the holidays that Celia Hampton 
first appeared to the Sinclair-Pemberley house¬ 
hold. She materialized in Robert Sinclair ’s por¬ 
trait class at the Three Arts League with the be¬ 
ginning of the new term. She interested him be¬ 
cause her work was sincere and delicate; she her¬ 
self was delicate, also, but he was not so sure of 
her sincerity. She puzzled him, too, somewhat. 
Better bred than the Bohemians, more earnest 
than the society dilettanti, she filled a unique 
place in a class which had begun to bore him a 
little before Christmas. And she was charm¬ 
ing to look upon. 

“I ’d like her intensity more,” Sinclair told 
his family, in describing her, “if I didn’t feel 
that all the while she knows she’s being in¬ 
tense. But her work’s too good to be sacrificed 
to her affectations. ’ 9 

That was why he wasted more sound anger 
upon her than on the rest of his class and then 
rebuked himself because she was too polite to 


22 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

glare like the Bohemians and too sensible to 
weep like the dabblers. Indeed, he sometimes 
wondered if his anger reached her at all, and 
if her soul did not sit quite undisturbed within 
walls of its own building. 

Joan met her for the first time at the Winter 
Academy, where two of Rob’s portraits were 
hung on the line. She looked wistful and 
friendless, somehow—her fragile beauty was of 
the type that holds an appeal—and Joan asked 
her to tea on the spot. She came, of a January 
dusk, bewitching in velvet and sealskin, her 
cheeks stung into unusual color by a savage 
wind. She was early, and Garth happened to 
be the only person in the studio to receive 
her. Taken by surprise, he hastily put down 
his book, and rose—not very easily—from the 
window-seat on which he had been curled up. 
Celia marked the crutches, all at once, and 
looked at him swiftly. 

“Everybody ought to be here in a minute,” 
he apologized. 

“You ’re Garth,” she said. “I’ve seen a 
picture of you at the Academy. Your father 
does paint well.” 

“My uncle,,” Garth corrected her. The idea 


ENTER CELIA 23 

of Fogger’s painting pictures amused him in¬ 
wardly. 

“Oh, yes I ” she said, as though it really did 
not matter much. She threw back her wraps 
and rustled lightly down beside him. 

“May one see the book?” She picked it up 
from the cushion and glanced at the cover. It 
was not quite what she might have expected, 
being entitled, ‘ ‘ The Sailing-Ship; Its Develop¬ 
ment and Perfection.” She looked at him 
again. 

“Do you like to read about ships?” 

It was quite evident that this was her first 
meeting with Garth! 

“Oh, yes!” he said quickly. 

She turned the pages idly, and, putting the 
book down, clasped small gloved hands about 
her knee. 

“Only fancy,” she mused, “I Ve never seen 
the ocean.” 

Her slight laughter rippled out, quite as 
though this was not an astounding and terrible 
thing she was telling him. Garth stared at her, 
thoroughly amazed. 

“Never—seen the sea!” he gasped. 

“Unless one could count New York Harbor 


24 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

and the Hudson,” she reflected. “They ’re 
salt, I believe.” 

“Oh, no,” Garth said gravely, “they 
would n’t do! Oh, I’m sorry. ” 

“Is it so dreadful?” she asked, laughing 
again. “Somebody—others have said so, too. 
But I thought I’d been quite a fortunate person 
—let me see; the Grand Canon, and Banff, and 
the Canadian Rockies, and—” she ticked them 
off on her fingers—“I’ve seen all those.” 

“But those wouldn’t do,” Garth protested; 
“not at all!” 

“No, really?” she said. “But then, I live 
in Cleveland when I’m at home, and that’s on 
the edge of a tremendously big lake. One can’t 
see the other shore, possibly. And there are 
huge waves.” 

But Garth shook his head decidedly over her 
case. 

“You know the other shore’s there,” he said, 
“and that it’s just more America. And it’s 
fresh water. It couldn’t have had any adven¬ 
tures.” 

Celia determined that she might as well be¬ 
gin to play this game in earnest and champion 
her great inland water. 

“What about the battle of Lake Erie,” she 


ENTER CELIA 


25 


asked, “and what ’s-his-name Perry saying, 
i We have met the enemy and they are ours,’ 
and all that sort of thing f” 

Garth was somewhat taken aback. He had 
to admit that this might well be ranked as an 
adventure after his own heart. But how could 
it tip the balance against the sea’s immemorial 
history, the half of it untold ? 

“When you see it,” he said, “perhaps you ’ll 
know the difference. I don’t think I could ever 
tell you.” 

Celia was interested enough to wonder if it 
was something in her own attitude which made 
it so impossible for him to explain the sea to 
her, or whether it was merely too large a sub¬ 
ject for a small boy to tackle. But her curios¬ 
ity was brief. Joan came in hurriedly with Sin¬ 
clair, and the talk above the tea-table swept 
from art to the theater and overseas and back 
again. Garth found his place in the book and, 
comfortably consuming a sponge-cake, went on 
reading. Sometimes he looked over the page 
at Miss Hampton, whose eyes were sparkling 
as she talked of somebody or other’s warm pal¬ 
ette in a way they had not when she talked of 
the sea. 

i 1 1 see quite what you mean about her, ’ ’ Joan 



26 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

said to her husband at dinner. “I think that 
she ’s experimented so long that she ’s forgot¬ 
ten her real self—and now she’s lost the way 
back to her own character.’ ’ 

‘ 6 Very neatly put,” Rob said. “I’m trying 
to show her the way in her work, at least.’’ 

“I like her,” Elspeth Pemberley remarked. 

“But think!” Garth said solemnly, all at 
once; “she’s never seen the sea. Only she 
called it the ocean.” 

“Do you think that’s what ’s the matter with 
her?” his uncle asked. 

Garth nodded decisively. 

“What’s the difference between the sea and 
the ocean?” Rob pursued. “Your tone was 
scornful.” 

Garth looked at him rather pityingly. 

“The ocean’s what you read about in geo¬ 
graphy books,” he explained, “and the sea— 
the sea—” 

“I perceive what you mean, I think,” said 
his uncle, as Garth sought words. “Thanks. 
I ’ll not make Miss Hampton’s mistake, now. 
I want to stay in your good graces.” 






CHAPTER III 

CELIA IS UNIMPRESSED 

G ARTH had not forgotten the symphony 
concert, nor had Joan forgotten his sub¬ 
sequent remark. So it happened that among 
the Christmas presents was a half-size violin. 

“If you were in earnest about wanting to 
make the music that was like the sea,” Joan 
had said, “here ’s your chance to prove it. 
The fiddle is my present; Uncle Rob’s will be 
lessons, if you ’ll work.” 

Garths mother, perhaps, would not have 
added the last condition. For though he was 
part dreamer, Garth was more than half crafts¬ 
man, and what he wanted to do he toiled at 
conscientiously—witness his elaborate and 
really careful boat plans. So that his new year 
began with diligent scrapings, and he was in no 
way discouraged that his quavering scales did 
not remotely suggest the notes of the concert 
violinist. 

“He ’ll never startle the musical world,” said 

27 


28 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

his teacher, “but he ’ll get lots of fun out of it 
himself. ’ ’ 

That, to be sure, was exactly why Joan had 
bought the violin. She continued to love Garth 
so dearly that anything which would give him 
lots of fun she wanted him to have. Elspeth, 
who loved him even more dearly, did not al¬ 
ways follow this principle. 

Miss Hampton came to the studio frequently. 
She was living in a furnished room in the 
Fifties—all for the sake of Art—and a real 
open fire, and a piano, and furniture that was 
everything but golden oak, rejoiced and re¬ 
freshed her. She had few friends in New 
York, and of them she liked best these new 
ones, who were sufficiently unconventional to 
be amusing and puzzling enough to be interest¬ 
ing. Each time that Celia mentally deplored 
the strange and simple fashioning of Elspeth’s 
gowns, she found something in the blue eyes 
above them that made her pause and ponder. 
And Garth gave her much cause for wonder¬ 
ment, for she began to find that he was not to 
be so lightly treated as she had at first imag¬ 
ined. Small boys of eight and a half she had 
previously classed together in one impartial 
category. She had a certain fund of re- 


CELIA IS UNIMPRESSED 


29 


marks supposedly suited to them, upon which 
she drew at random; indeed, a good deal of 
Celia’s conversation with every one was ar¬ 
ranged on this principle. A great many of the 
remarks—dealing largely with sports—she 
found obviously ruled out. This left her more 
or less in the position of listener, and when 
she found that she could not always understand 
what she heard, she became enough interested 
to open a window in the wall which Sinclair 
held she had built around herself, and listen 
with her mind as well as her ears. 

She arrived at the studio late one afternoon 
with a sheaf of sketches for criticism. Garth 
was interlarding serious practice with slipping 
chromatic effects supposed to simulate wind. 
His mother, apparently not at all disturbed, 
was writing by the window. Joan and Rob 
were nut. Elspeth apologized—her letter must 
catch the foreign mail—and left Celia’s enter¬ 
tainment to her son. He put down the violin 
and plunged at once, as was his way, into the 
topic which had been last in his mind. 

“It really sounds quite like that,” he stated, 
“only there ought to be something at the same 
time to go boom, boom, when it goes into the 
corner of the tower.” 


30 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Elspeth’s hurrying pen paused. “I don’t be¬ 
lieve Miss Hampton knows what you ’re talking 
about, Pem,” she murmured. 

“The wind,” he explained, “at Silver Shoal. 
Nor’east.” 

“Really,” Celia said, “I don’t know which 
you think about most,—that lighthouse or your 
father. ’ ’ 

The next instant she was sorry she had said 
it. She had forgotten that it was unwise to 
speak without thinking where Garth was con¬ 
cerned. He stiffened slightly. 

“They ’re almost the same thing,” he said 
gravely. 

Elspeth, at the desk, hastily transcribed the 
incident for the delectation of Jim in the North 
Sea. 

“I thought the wholly new life might rub it 
off somewhat,” she wrote on, “but not so. 
He’s interested in school, and fiddling, and 
town doings, mildly, but I believe he’s more 
obviously sea-struck here than when he had the 
sea to cool his fancies. And it is quite true 
that his thoughts of you and the Light are al¬ 
most inseparable. He lost you both at so nearly 
the same time, of course. You write, ‘Don’t 


CELIA IS UNIMPRESSED 31 

let him turn into a landlubber.’ Good gracious, 
there ’s no fear! He’s becoming a monoma¬ 
niac. ’’ 

Celia’s mental wall was built unusually high 
and strong this afternoon. She had come to 
show sketches to Mr. Sinclair, and to discourse 
on vibration and envelopment, not to talk about 
the wind to a small boy. She was bored and 
somewhat sleepy. 

“You Ye a funny little boy,” she said list¬ 
lessly, and Elspeth cocked an ear for her son’s 
reply. 

Rather as she expected, there was none. But 
it was not usual for Garth to leave a point 
unargued nor a listener unconvinced. 

“Heavens!” scribbled his mother, “he is fin¬ 
ishing it off with the Sails of Argo—as one 
might turn to the Bible!” and sealed her let¬ 
ter. 

For Garth had indeed reached out and pulled 
from the bookcase a small green volume which 
bore his father’s name on the title-page. He 
turned without hesitation to a leaf headed 
“Seaward Windows,” and thrust the book into 
Celia’s lap, a brown finger urgently indicating 
what she was to read. She skimmed the page 
idly. 


32 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

- Oh, listen where yon lie! 

A ship’s bell struck in the night, 

The upward flash of a light— 

What is it passing by? 

Lean from the seaward room, 

Open the pane and hark, 

Blotting the starry dark 
Her gray topgallants loom. 

Under her counter a gleam 
Swings silver and swift astern; 

Jewels, her side lights burn; 

She is gone—a half caught dream. 

Silent she was, and tall; 

Nothing there is of her now 
But the dwindling light at her bow 
And a fret of foam at our wall. 

“That’s what you could see sailing under 
our windows-,-” he said, as she turned the pages, 
“not—” his absent gaze sought the window be¬ 
side him with distant scorn—“not—taxis.” 

Celia leaned back among her furs and 
yawned imperceptibly. 

“Taxis are useful at times,” she said. “But 
your father really must be rather clever, you 
know. ’ ’ 

And then Elspeth, who was watching her, 


CELIA IS UNIMPRESSED 


33 


saw come into her face a look of weariness and 
wonder and bitterness, unforeseen and wholly 
unexpected. Elspeth, amazed, had not known 
that the girl could feel anything so deeply as 
this that she was now feeling, whatever it was. 
Garth, who had not seen the leashed desperation 
that his mother had caught, and who resented 
the perfunctory dismissal of his father’s tal¬ 
ents with a phrase, was framing a sober re¬ 
ply. 

Happily, at that moment, Sinclair came in, 
cold and apologetic; and Elspeth took it upon 
herself to order tea and to turn on lights by 
which Celia’s sketches might be examined. 


CHAPTER IV 


A CONFESSION AND A DECISION 

T HAT was the winter, now half forgotten, 
when New York was a vibrant pattern of 
flags. They drooped and blazed and stirred in 
a shifting glory above Fifth Avenue, through 
the mist-hung reaches of that great street that 
was briefly known as “Avenue of the Allies.’’ 
It was the winter of a hundred “ drives,” when 
every one’s lapel glittered with badges of this 
and that committee, and pretty ladies in becom¬ 
ing head-dresses sold little flags on every corner 
for some cause. It was the tense winter when 
America had added her weight to the force 
that was pushing against the advance of a ruth¬ 
less and relentless enemy. New York tingled 
with reflected excitement. It cheered itself 
hoarse when automobile-loads of “Diables 
Bleus” were seen flitting about the streets; it 
poured forth its money at the feet of a heroi¬ 
cally draped lady who sang the “Marseillaise” 
on the steps of the Public Library; it erected 

34 



CONFESSION AND DECISION 35 

that mammoth bewilderment, the Hero Land 
Bazaar. 

Joan took Garth to Hero Land, which thrilled 
him exceedingly and tired him very much. But, 
with his usual faculty for charming outsiders 
quite unwittingly into his service, he had al¬ 
ways some willing henchman just at the mo¬ 
ment when it became apparent that he could do 
no more himself. Thus, before the afternoon 
was out, a Kilty, a French sailor, and an im¬ 
mense Anzac had taken it upon themselves to 
carry Garth through their particular realm, 
and sometimes outside of it. He accepted what 
was really necessity quite simply, merely pro¬ 
testing gravely that he was afraid he was 
rather heavy. To this the Anzac, who was 
about six feet four in height, made no reply 
save a remote and sonorous chuckle. The 
French sailor, to the same protest, answered 
blithely, “Ah, mais non, non, mon brave!” 

This was in the middle of a broad and won¬ 
derful stairway, where living peacocks and par¬ 
rots stirred slumbrously in dimly lighted 
niches, and swart, turbaned Moors leaned on 
simitars to guard whatever might lie at the top 
of this magic stair. 

“Like going into Aladdin’s garden, per- 


36 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

haps,” Garth murmured, grasping the sailor 
ecstatically. 

But it was only a silly tea-room at the top, 
after all, which, though it yielded pleasant 
lemonade, was a disappointment after its en¬ 
chanted approach. Garth had longed to dis¬ 
cuss with the French sailor things nautical in 
his experience, but, finding that each was ham¬ 
pered by a very slight knowledge of the other’s 
language, he had to give up his wish. After 
some reflection, however, he did achieve the 
remark, “Merci beaucoup, monsieur,” at part¬ 
ing, which caused the sailor to cry, “Ah, ha! 
C’est un p’tit frangais, eh?” and to salute 
French fashion, palm out, which salute Garth 
returned in good Annapolis style. 

Hero Land was sufficiently exhausting, even 
to the wholly able-bodied grown-up. Every¬ 
thing was exhausting that winter. Garth, if 
he had ever looked back upon it comprehen¬ 
sively, would have found one long impression 
of tiredness. An unflagging tiredness - that 
pursued him at school, and at home, and made 
the shortest walk in the somber beautiful park 
a thing to be dreaded, and even intruded itself 
into the candle-lit hours of after-dinner music 
in the studio. 


CONFESSION AND DECISION 37 

Elspeth, who was his mother, saw it and 
said nothing. Joan, who was only his aunt, 
said, “How fast he’s growing!” He was, 
truly, but that was not enough to make this 
dragging weariness that almost bordered on 
suffering. Even Celia could see it, and studied 
his face with an odd sort of pity, as if she 
were comparing something. 

“He’s tired, and he wants his precious sea,” 
she told his mother, as though that were new 
to Elspeth. “I’m tired,” murmured Celia, 
“and I want—” 

“I wonder what you do want,” Elspeth 
thought, as Celia left her sentence unfinished. 

They were sitting in the studio, Elspeth mark¬ 
ing six new handkerchiefs “Gr.P.,” and Celia 
finishing a sketch. They were alone, for Eob 
was lecturing in Jersey, and Joan had gone out 
with her beloved nephew. All at once Celia laid 
down her brush, and, raising her paper, began 
tearing it systematically into shreds, slowly, 
with a sort of cold delight in the harsh, rending 
sounds. It had been a particularly good 
sketch, but she laughed as she tore it—and it 
was not a nice laugh. Elspeth said nothing, 
which perhaps disappointed Celia, who had 
unconsciously hoped to make an effect. 


38 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Do you ever feel like doing such things?” 
she demanded, turning swiftly. 

“Sometimes,” said Elspeth, folding a hand¬ 
kerchief. 

“Do you do them?” Celia pursued. 

“No. ” Elspeth raised steady blue eyes from 
the work. “Why do you?” 

Then, seeing suddenly a great gap in the 
wall of Celia’s inner stronghold, and a crying 
need of speech, she put out her hand and said 
again, “Why?” in a wholly different tone. 

“I’ve found out about Celia,” Elspeth told 
her sister-in-law that night. 

Robert was still in Jersey, and they were 
nursing the last of a fire on the hearth and 
waiting for him. 

‘ ‘ Which ? ” Joan asked. ‘ 1 1 should say there 
was a deal to find out.” 

“Almost everything,” Elspeth said. 

‘‘ Clever one! And you do it without saying 
anything yourself.” 

“You speak as if from experience,” Elspeth 
laughed. 

“ I do, ” Joan said, stirring the coals. ‘ ‘ You 
knew all about me before I’d been at Silver 


CONFESSION AND DECISION 39 

Shoal two days, wretched, selfish, sophisticated 
creature that I was!” 

“Come, come!” her sister-in-law protested. 
“I did see that you were frozen into the like¬ 
ness of your intolerant city, and needed a lit¬ 
tle salt water and eel-grass and beach fire to 
thaw you out.” 

“And Garth,” said Joan. 

“And Garth,” agreed his mother. 

‘ ‘ To think that I was actually rude to him— 
yes, I was!” Joan sighed. “I was horrid. 
But what about Celia?” 

“It*s simply that she was in love, and her 
man’s dead—or as good as dead.” 

“That ? s enough to explain all sorts of 
things,” Joan agreed. “Poor little thing! 
Did she tell you it, flat?” 

“Not quite so flat. His name is Wyeth Mer- 
riman, and he went over at once with the For¬ 
eign Legion. Nothing has been heard of him 
since last summer, and he ’s listed as missing— 
which usually means dead, of course. He 
wanted to go in the navy, being fond of water 
things apparently, but I gather that she dis¬ 
couraged him, holding that the soldier’s is the 
nobler career.” 



40 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“I should think she ’d feel some regrets, 
now,” Joan interrupted. 

‘‘That goes without saying,” Elspeth said. 
“I should judge that she ’s a person who’s al¬ 
ways more or less retreated within a bulwark 
of perfunctory manner, but she ’s so far inside 
it now that I’m inclined to think what we see 
isn’t the real Celia Hampton at all. She ? s 
really back there, going around in a miserable 
little circle of selfish self-reproach and unhap¬ 
piness and never even looking out at a loophole 
—except sometimes through her pictures.” 

“I gather that she did more than look out 
at a loophole this afternoon,” said Joan. 

‘‘Somewhat more,” Elspeth confessed. 

“You old dear!” Joan murmured. 

“I merely listened intelligently,” Elspeth 
explained. 

“That,” said her sister-in-law, “is a gift 
in itself . 9 9 

Elspeth, at some sound Joan would never 
have heard, rose swiftly and left the room. 
Joan sat looking at the spent embers and think¬ 
ing back along her acquaintance with Celia 
Hampton; wondering, too, how much of the lit¬ 
tle, piteous, half-regretted story Elspeth still 
kept locked behind her quiet eyes. Then she 


CONFESSION AND DECISION 41 

turned, to catch the murmur of voices from 
Garth ’s room. So it was he Elspeth had heard. 
Joan was tilled with a rush of sweet jealousy 
of her sister-in-law, whose ears were quicker 
than hers to catch his half-waking word, whose 
right it was to go to him before any other. 
Joan, who adored him, stretched out empty 
hands to the tire. 

“Come home soon, my Rob,” she whispered. 

When Elspeth came back she stood at the 
mantel instead of sitting down, and pushed the 
half-dead coals together with her toe. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. 
“He falls asleep when he ought to be awake, 
and wakes up when he ought to be asleep. I 
don’t know whether it’s your horrid city—the 
saturated solution of gasolene you call air—or 
what. I wish, often and often, that we had n’t 
had to give up Silver Shoal. Perhaps school’s 
too much; I’ve a mind to stop that. I wish 
he wouldn’t miss Jim so fearfully.” 

That was when Joan reminded Elspeth that 
he was growing very fast. Elspeth agreed. 

1 ‘ But it’s not all that. It’s mental and phys¬ 
ical and psychological and everything. I sup¬ 
pose that when a nerve-center has suffered as 
much as his did when he was ill, the real strain 


42 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

he ’s been living under is bound to tell. We 
keep forgetting that he was raised on a rock 
like a baby herring-gull. Simply existing, in 
town, must be a tax on his energy—let alone 
school. ’’ 

So it came about that Elspeth made up her 
mind to something she had been half putting off 
for months, and took her son to a specialist of 
note. They were a sober, clear-eyed pair who 
waited in the silent, inhospitable office. 

4 4 Like waiting for Dr. Stone, only no 
train-ride first,” Garth said, with memories 
of those occasional hot trips to town in light¬ 
house days. 

44 Yes and no,” thought his mother, somehow 
aware of decisive happenings impending. 

The specialist was of the capable, violent, and 
terse variety. When the examination was over 
he slammed the door of the inner room on 
Garth and faced Elspeth alone. 

44 Don’t know who’s handled the case for 
you,” he said explosively, 44 but, professional 
fraternity aside, he’s a fool. I could have put 
the boy on his feet years ago. Never be nor¬ 
mal —” he answered the rising gleam in Els¬ 
peth’s face— 44 what do you expect? Get rid 
of the crutches, anyway. Always will have 



CONFESSION AND DECISION 43 

trouble with that leg, but what do you expectV 9 

Elspeth had expected nothing like this, but 
said little. The surgeon wheeled to his secre¬ 
tary. 

“Fix up my first open date for Mrs. Pem¬ 
berton—Pemberley—what is it ? I work at St. 
Luke’s, madam. May second? Eight.” 

“But—” said Elspeth. 

“Did n’t you expect me to operate, madam?” 
said the specialist, opening his eyes wide be¬ 
hind his magnifying glasses. “Of course, if 
you want to condemn him—” Something in 
Elspeth’s face made him cut the sentence short. 
“Will that date suit you?” he finished lamely. 

“Perfectly,” said Elspeth. 

“Good day, then; telephone my secretary if 
you wish to make arrangements.” He bowed 
slightly, but Elspeth lingered. 

“If I may have my son, now, please?” she 
said whimsically. 

The surgeon turned, surprised and half 
frowning, and then burst into a laugh that be¬ 
lied his savagely nervous speech. 

“Oh, surely!” he cried. “I don’t eat little 
boys! ’ ’ 

He pushed open the door he had so summa¬ 
rily slammed. Elspeth straightened herself. 


44 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Come on, Pern,” she said; “we ’ll be late 
for lunch.’ ’ 

‘ 1 Fatten him up for me!’ 9 called the special¬ 
ist after them. 

“What for!” said Garth, in the elevator. 

“Don’t you know how the witch fattened 
Hansel!” his mother twinkled. 

“She wanted to eat him,” mused Garth; 
“but he stuck out little bones through the bars 
and she thought he was getting thinner. I 
don’t s’pose he wants to eat me.” 

“He wants,” said Elspeth, “to give you good 
sea-legs—better ones, ’ ’ she amended hastily. 

The look he gave her flashed from, “Is it a 
joke!” to, “Don’t fool me, Mudder!” in a sec¬ 
onds space. 

“Truly,” she answered his unspoken ques¬ 
tion. “Truly, dear one.” 

That night Elspeth three times began a let¬ 
ter to her husband, and three times tore it to 
bits and dropped it slowly into the fire. She 
felt more keenly alone than at any time since 
he had gone to sea. Joan and Robert, when 
asked for advice, had said gaily, “Splendid! 
he ’s one of the best, isn’t he! Why hesi¬ 
tate!” and Rob had added, “Er—if it’s the 



CONFESSION AND DECISION 45 


filthy lucre, you know—” and she had silenced 
him with a swift little kiss. 

But Garth was not their Garth. His mother 
put down her pen and fled now blindly to his 
little room to crouch beside ‘his bed and stare 
blankly at this sudden grave decision to be 
made that had risen all in a moment. Was it 
decision at all? How could there be but one 
possible thought? What was she afraid of? 
There was no danger, really. Her arm crept 
cautiously over him; he stirred and snuggled 
into it. So much more of him to hold than 
when she had carried him, a frail helpless baby, 
to Silver Shoal! His cheek, smooth and warm 
and brown, lay close to hers. His quiet breath¬ 
ing faintly stirred the soft bands of her dark 
hair. Her eyes slipped past him to where the 
Ship of Dreams sailed above the bed, misty 
and magical. Beneath, his coat hung over a 
chair, the abhorred Eton collar awry, the neck¬ 
tie dangling haphazard. The crutches leaned 
against the back of the chair, battered and 
somehow trustworthy-looking. 

Garth’s mother hid her face in the pillow. 

“Jim!” she whispered unsteadily, to reach 
the North Sea. “Jim—oh, Jim!” 


CHAPTER V 


BEING A CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

PART OF A LETTER FROM ELSPETH PEMBERLEY TO 
LIEUTENANT J. E. PEMBERLEY: 

... So I thought I wouldn’t write anything at 
all about it until it was over, because you mightn’t 
have got the second letter for a long time, and then 
you’d have worried. I almost thought of cabling, 
but we decided it would be foolish, because there was 
really no danger. He was quite fine—didn’t want 
me to stay, because he saw I dreaded it, but of course 
I did stay. He held my hand while he was going 
under the ether, and went at it conscientiously with 
no backing and filling at all. He had to go under 
twice because the thing is very complicated—quite 
terrifying and incomprehensible to me—muscle¬ 
grafting and so forth. The surgeon is an awesome 
being but tremendously competent and quite honest. 
Confesses that Garth will never be normal, and tells 
me frankly just how much improvement there ’ll be. 

The little room at St. Luke’s is nice, and Joan has 
filled it full of flowers. Just at first he was too 
much hurt to care about anything, but now he’s over 
the worst part and being frightfully bored by hav¬ 
ing to lie still. Not that he could do anything else 

46 


47 


A CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

if he tried, but he thinks he could. It will be a long 
pull, much longer than he has any idea of—several 
months before he’s on his feet. He is quite incorri¬ 
gible, and reads such things as the Pilot Guide to 
New York Harbor and its Approaches, by preference. 
I suppose when he can sit up he ’ll draw boats in¬ 
numerable—and until he can, Rob does it for him. 
Very funny ones which send them both into shouts 
of laughter. He hasn’t forgotten how to laugh— 
and by the way, he said “Fogger” first of all, when 
he came to. 

PAET OF ANOTHER LETTER FROM THE SAME TO THE 

same: 


... You can’t be missing us half as much as we 
miss you; and good gracious, what experiences you ’re 
having! Even the annoyingly veiled hints that the 
censor allows set us all artingle. Garth has laid out 
hypothetical courses for you all over the Irish Sea, 
where he thinks you now are, and invents all manner 
of manceuvers. The number of subs he has made you 
sink is quite appalling—I should think von Tirpitz 
would be tearing out his ornamental beard by the 
handful in his despair. Oh, Jim, he is being quite 
splendid (not Tirpitz!) because it is a hard pull. He 
is enthusiastically interested in everything, and when 
you see he’s beginning to be tired and you ask him 
if it hurts, he looks you in the eye and says, “What 
do you mean?” He has lost a good deal of tan, 
which you ’ll regret, but otherwise he’s unchanged 
—unless it is that he looks more like you than ever, 


48 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

quite wonderful. Do you remember the year before 
we went to Silver Shoal, when we thought he never 
would walk at all again ? This bedside is so different, 
' with promise ahead! And he was very different, 
poor frightened baby that he was. He asked for the 
Lullaby of the Little Ship the other night—do you 
remember ?—and I sang it, and he went to sleep with 
one hand in mine and the other curled up under his 
chin, just the way he used to. Wasn’t it long ago! 
Or was it yesterday? Looking at him, I felt uncer¬ 
tain. 

Bob is doing a remarkably clever half-length of 
Joan, and he has been making a lot of good things of 
Garth—little ones. G. P. wouldn’t let me send you 
one, because he said it looked too flat. 

“Wait till I get sitting up like a person,” says he, 
“and then Uncle Rob can do one for Fogger, but 
those ones are flatter ’n a flounder! 

A LETTER FROM G. PEMBERLEY TO LIEUTENANT 
J. E. PEMBERLEY : 

Dearest Fogger: 

I’m in sick bay as probly mudder told you only 
this is the first time I could write being not alowed 
to sit up long enogh befor. Now it is going to be 
a good long one because none of my famly is here 
and I have lots of time. I’m going to be a lot beter 
only not enough to be an able seaman yet. This is 
rather a bestly place in some respecs every body is 
extremly kind but do you know what I mean it is 
too montonus. Our famly isnt they are very nice. 


A CHAPTER OF LETTERS 49 

Joan broght a wopping huge lot of dafadills which 
I never saw at Silver Shoal and Uncle Rob draws 
any amont of exiting pictures and mudder is here 
all the time and you know what she would do. But 
I wish you were here and could do some of the exit- 
ingest storeys. I made up some but they werent very 
good. There is a thing rather like a sawhorse, smaller, 
which is underneath the covers and keeps them 
off me so it dosnt hurt very much and any way I 
think about Bold Benbow. But he dident mind be¬ 
cause he was waloping the enmy and saw chainshot 
flying all around but there is nothing out of my 
window except the top of the cathydrel with Saint 
Mikeal or somebody blowing on a horn. After a wile 
you want to see him do something else. Please write 
me a long, long one, very exiting about the Good 
Days if you arent alowed to tell what your doing. 
I supose you wont get this for ages and I wont get 
yours for ages but Ill be here for ages so it doesnt 
mater. Dont you think my spelling is improved? 
They are rather strick at Saint Hubert’s and specily 
Mr. Harford. I went away before the end of the 
term and every body was very nice. Miss Rutha- 
ferd, I don 1 know how to spell that, whose my nurse 
says I must stop which makes me anoyed because 
I wanted to make you a sheer plan of a good kind of 
schooner but perhaps I can later. Please dont be 
rolled out of your bunk and smashed when she tunes 
up. My bunk is awfuly stationery. Yours most 
respecfuly, 


Pemberley. 



50 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Please tell me everything because this place is not at 
all like a ship. 

AN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE, SOME TIME LATER: 

Ashore; somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. 
My very Dearest: 

We are just in from a pretty strenuous trip, and 
here at the Base I find a lot of letters, each one more 
surprising than the one before it. Nothing so excit¬ 
ing has happened over here—for me. Can you know 
how glad I am it will all be so fine in the end, and 
how sorry I am it’s been so miserable just now? 
Mudder tells me a lot of things in her letters which 
you don’t in yours, and I gather that you made rather 
heavy weather of it for a bit but didn’t strike your 
colors. I liked your letter tremendously, writ out 
so neat, but I’m sorry you didn’t get the boat-plan 
in. Hospital may be monotonous (mark the spell¬ 
ing, man!) but I’m afraid you wouldn’t find our 
sick bay on board very comfy. We ’re not often sick, 
but when we are they lash us in till we ’re like hori¬ 
zontal papooses, perfectly tight, while the old packet 
does figure-eights all over the vasty deep. So it 
wouldn’t be very nice for your poor old timbers. 

Timbers remind me of Benbow; he was indeed full 
of spunk to lie on deck and command his ship even 
when his leg was carried off by chain-shot. You say 
he didn’t mind because he was walloping the enemy 
—but don’t you think that perhaps you ’re walloping 
the enemy, too? All sorts of underhanded Hunnish 
enemies that I dare say you must be having to fight— 



A CHAPTER OF LETTERS 51 

like Things-Hurting, and Lying-Awake, and Want- 
ing-Mudder-When-She ’s-Not-There, and—oh, well, 
you know 'em all. So keep on looking at St. Michael 
(or is it the Angel Gabriel?) and let him sound any¬ 
thing but Retreat on that bugle of his. 

I’m glad the family is nice, but they would be. 
Tell Uncle Rob to draw you a picture of a tidy little 
sloop-of-war being boarded by bad beastly buccaneers 
off the coasts of High Barbary. The pirates are 
climbing all over the place with cutlasses in their 
teeth, and the sloop captain is standing in the chan¬ 
nels with a boarding-pike—very nasty—disposing of 
the buccaneer chief. One of the men is ramming 
grape-shot into the cannon in the waist, and a pow¬ 
der-monkey is running up with the charge. All this 
will give you and Uncle Rob—particularly Uncle 
Rob—a lot to do. He can put in as much else as he 
wants to; it might be a good idea to have a frigate 
standing in to help the sloop if she seems to be get¬ 
ting into too much trouble. I could describe a real 
thing that happened only a few days ago, but I’d be 
put in the brig or worse if I breathed it, so we ’ll have 
to wait until the war is over. 

I see that you want me to write a long, exciting 
one, about the Good Days. This is quite long enough 
already, and it’s a good thing that several dozen 
sheets of this foreign paper take up no more room than 
one of ours. The Good Days seem very far away, 
here. I wonder what they’d have thought of us— 
clipping along at 25 knots and rolling 50 degrees. 
Why weren’t the stories you wrote good ones? I 




52 GABTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

wish you’d send me some—also the new schooner 
plan. Also—tell me what comprises a complete trans¬ 
verse frame, what is a rider-plate, what are spur 
shoes, and how high above the hull should a ship 
carry her masthead light? There, sir, I expect cor¬ 
rect answers to all these questions, and I am as 
strict (note spelling, please) as Mr. Harford. 

Dear man, I think about you every minute—and if 
you feel something rather queer-shaped and quite 
salty on your pillow, it will be a lot of kisses. I took 
them to the radio man and he said he thought he 
could get them through, but he couldn’t guarantee 
what they’d look like at the other end. 

Yours—respectfully, forsooth!—Your own 

Fogger. 

AN ANSWER TO THE LAST; STILL LATER: 

Lt. J. E. Pemberley, 8 . G., Esq. K. C . BJf 

Dearest Sir: Question no. 1 A complete trans¬ 
verse frame comprises a floor-plate a beam a pillar 
and something else only what? 2. I don’t know but 
I think timbers like half-beams only where? no. 3 
Oh I got them mixed up. No. 2 is meant to be spur 
shoes. This is the rider-plate. A plate on top of the 
middle keelson. This is not fair because I hap- 
aned to see it when I was looking up something. No. 
4 Not less than 20 ft. above the hull depending on 
the bredth of the ship. And that isnt fair because 
its in the Pilot Guide. I can sit up all the time now 
in bed I mean and mudder and I are takeing up the 
studey of french. It is very intresting and here 




53 


A CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

goes for some—true ones not in the book. Ma lit et 
dans le chambe. Le chambe et dans le hopital. 
Mon pere et un matelot. Jaim lui beaucoup. II 
sinkerai les soubmarins boches. I don’t know any 
such word, questce que sais? Ma tante apportez un 
joli fleur a moi. We do it all the time dont you think 
its a good idea? Also Uncle Rob and I do mecani- 
chal drawing he brought his drawing board that tips 
up on legs and goes over the bed. Joan cant do 
mecanichal drawing but she does lovely curlycues 
with the compases all colors. Oh their all good they 
dont do any of their own things at all. We are read¬ 
ing a trifically exiting book called twenty thousand 
leauges under the Sea but wouldnt the boshes laugh 
at Captain Nemo’s submarine! I dont think its the 
same about me and Benbow. By the way Uncle Rob 
got stuck in the picture you told him to draw and 
made a near-to one of just some of the pirates and 
the sloop crew not quite so many ropes. Here is a 
poem I made today which I wish you would critasize. 
It sounds rather funny. Of course it isnt true what 
I see here but the gun means the sunset gun of course 
somewhere where there is one. The name of it is 


: Sunset and Dusk : 

The sun has set I hear the, 

Thunder of the gun and roaring of the sea, 
Stelthily creeps on the dusk and, 

The changeing of the mingled sand, 

Stops for night aproaches as, 


54 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Some dusky specter form that glides, 

0 ’re all the world and hides. 

It from sight. 

G. Pemberley, June 1918. 

Mudder didnt know what it meant about the sand 
but you do dont you ? When the sun goes off it how 
it stops shimering and gets all gray all over ? I will 
have to get some foreign paper too if I write such 
enormeous letters but I’m suposed to be takeing a 
nap and nobody is here so I go on and on. Sure 
enough I got the kisses not much bent and now they 
live under the pillow to keep warm. Here comes my 
nurse I think and I supose she will put me in the 
Brig for not takeing the nap so goodby in a hurry 
your most terebly loveing son, 


G. P. 


CHAPTEE VI 


SICK-BAY 

B UT it was not the nurse. While Garth was 
engaged in hastily fitting his letter into 
its envelope—a task involving much toil, as he 
had folded the paper crooked—there was a 
sound at the open door and a nice, low, rather 
dreamy voice said: 

“Your room looks so jolly, all the flowers 
and everything, I couldn’t help stopping. Do 
you mind ?’ 9 

Garth looked up. It was a young man in 
street clothes. Except that he was somewhat 
pale and quite thin, he didn’t look like a 
patient. He seemed to have all his arms and 
legs, and he carried himself very squarely. 
“Course not,” said Garth. “Come on in.” 
The young man came on in and sat down. 
He said nothing for some time, while Garth re¬ 
folded the letter. 

“I’ve been writing to my Fog—father,” 
Garth announced finally, feeling the need of 

55 



56 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

starting the conversation. “He’s in the 
North Sea—or the Irish Sea, I’m not sure.” 

“Indeed ?” said the man. “I’d like to be in 
the North Sea.” 

Garth kindled. Here was a proper spirit! 

“My father is third in command of a de¬ 
stroyer/ J he said, “bnt he used to just sail onr 
cat-boat.’’ 

The yonng man seemed to fathom the con¬ 
nection in this rather disjointed speech; he 
smiled appreciatively. 

“Yon’d rather have him sailing the cat-boat, 
perhaps,” he said. Then—“Did you ever 
cruise ?’ 9 

The calm and gentle way in which he took 
for granted a previous seafaring career so far 
as his listener was concerned intrigued Garth 
hugely. 

“I never did,” he said. “Oh, I always 
wanted to! Fogger never could get away from 
the Light, you see.” 

And then there followed a rapturous expla¬ 
nation—all about the Light, and the Ailouros, 
and Trasket Rock, and dear knows what else. 
There never was such a quietly enthusiastic 
hearer as this young man. 

“And why are you here now, Bo’sun?” 


SICK-BAY 


57 


His father’s old term of affectionate address 
caught Garth suddenly—“ amidships,” Jim 
would have said. When he could, he explained 
why. 

“I see,” said the young man. He could say 
volumes in one word. 

“Why are you?” Garth asked. “You don’t 
look sick exactly.” 

“I’m not—exactly. I was, I think.” 

“Were you in the war?” That was the ob¬ 
vious thing to ask young men in hospitals at 
that time. 

“I think so,” was the surprising answer. 

“Don’t you know?” said Garth, hitching him¬ 
self higher on his pillow to stare at the young 
man. His friend encircled him with a strong 
and steady arm and made the pillow exactly 
right, before he replied. 

“I’m sure I was,—I think I’m sure. Let’s 
talk about cruising some more. My name is 
John Loomis; did I tell you that ? ’ ’ 

No, he hadn’t. Garth was glad to know 
the name. He had volunteered his own earlier 
in the conversation. 

“I used to cruise,” pursued Mr. Loomis, “a 
long time ago. Very long. Before the war, 
even. And once I prevailed on a schooner cap- 


58 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

tain to take me on a coastwise voyage. I forget 
his name,—hers was the Draco. She was a nice 
schooner; three-masted. I nsed to sleep flat 
on the deck at night, with just the big black 
sails to see, and stars passing between them. 
Just cracks of stars.” 

Garth sighed. This was almost the kind of 
thing Fogger would tell. He put out his hand 
for the young man’s. As he had written, St. 
Luke’s was not at all like a ship. He wanted 
Mr. John Loomis to stay, and talk and talk 
about the Draco . 

‘ 4 Draco ’s a constellation, too, isn’t it?” 
Garth put in. “A long, winding one.” 

“A dragon, yes,” said Mr. Loomis. “If you 
like ships, of course you like stars, too, don’t 
you. You know Draco—coiling around below 
the Great Bear. And do you know the Ass’s 
Colts that feed from the Silver Manger?” 

No, Garth didn’t. This was magic! Oh, 
why had not this young man come before, when 
the days had dragged even more slowly, filled 
with pain. 

“No?” said Mr. Loomis. “Some people call 
it the Beehive but it is n’t; it’s the Silver Man¬ 
ger.” He looked swiftly from the window. 
“North-—south. Would they let me come in 


SICK-BAY 


59 


after dark? Then we could find it. They are 
hard to find, and easily frightened. Have you 
ever slept on the ground with only stars over 
you ?’ 7 

i ‘ Once,’ 7 said Garth, tingling with the mem¬ 
ory of a night when he and Joan had been ma¬ 
rooned on Trasket. 

“It ’s the best way to sleep ,’ 7 said Loomis. 
“I say—that—that 7 s beautiful!” 

Garth followed his eyes to the Ship of 
Dreams, which had been transplanted to St. 
Luke’s and hung at the foot of the bed. More 
explanations were in order. They were a bit 
confused by references to a square-rigger that 
had passed under the windows of Silver Shoal 
in the dawn, and so forth. But Loomis looked 
from the picture back to Garth, in his dreamy 
way. 

“Your ship,” he said. “I understand.” 

And Garth knew that he did. 

“You must come to see me every day,” he 
begged. “And don’t forget the Ass’s Colts! 
Oh dear!—No, I don’t really mean oh dear— 
but I’m going home next week. I sha’n’t be 
able to walk or anything for ages still, but I’m 
going away from this place. Won’t they let 
you come to see me? Are you really sick?” 


60 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“I don’t think I am,” said the young man. 
“I should like to come to see you. Perhaps 
they ’ll not let me, though.” 

“Oh, they must! Isn’t it funny, some¬ 
how—” 

Garth’s spoken sentence trailed into silence 
as he followed out a thought. 

“What is?” Loomis prompted. 

“I was just thinking how funny it was, the 
way some people like things, and some people 
just can’t understand how to.” 

“I suppose it would be quite a stupid world 
if every one liked the same things and did the 
same things,” the young man said. “What, 
for instance?” 

“I was thinking—how Fogger and I can’t 
help liking the sea, and Mudder does because 
we do, and you like it, and Joan did n’t at first, 
and Miss Celia Hampton never will.” 

‘ ‘ Poor lady! ’ ’ said Loomis, ‘ ‘ She is to be pit¬ 
ied, is n’t she? Who is Miss Hampton?” 

“She’s a painting young lady,” Garth re¬ 
plied with faintest scorn. 

“Face or landscape?” said the young man 
gravely, with a twitch of the lip. 

“People,” Garth answered in all seriousness, 


SICK-BAY 


61 


“and my Uncle Bob is teaching her how.” 

The young man laughed and rose. “I ’ll not 
forget Draco, and the Silver Manger,’’ he said, 
“if they ’ll let me come. I suppose I might 
come aboard by stealth, anyway. They don’t 
post a guard over you at night, do they!” 

“Not now,” Garth answered. 

“Bight!” said Loomis. “A low whistle at 
the starboard gangway, then, at eight bells in 
the second dog-watch. ’ ’ 

With which he was gone. Garth came back 
to realization of the plain white room and the 
unalterable confines of the high hospital bed, 
and found himself with the unaccountable feel¬ 
ing that it was his father who had just left him. 
Memories of Fogger mingled pleasantly with 
thoughts of Mr. Loomis and blurred drowsily in 
one comfortable current of drifting fancy. Twi¬ 
light began to dim the white walls; the angel 
on top of the cathedral faded to a purple silhou¬ 
ette ; the Ship of Dreams loomed larger, as she 
often did at dusk, and put aside the bounds of 
her frame. There was a humming of emerald 
water at her bow. . . . Miss Butherford, com¬ 
ing in with Garth’s supper, put the tray down 
very quietly. 


62 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

*‘Seems half a shame to wake him up,” she 
said to herself before she reached for the light- 
switch. 

It was not too long a walk, from the apart¬ 
ment to the hospital. This afternoon Celia was 
with Elspeth. She had been to see Garth only 
once before, bearing three Gold of Ophir roses. 
This time she brought a coloured print of Old 
Ironsides, a well-meant offering which pleased 
Garth greatly. The first of the hot weather 
had seized New York, Robert Sinclair had thun¬ 
dered at her in class that morning, she felt her¬ 
self altogether trampled upon by Fate, and she 
walked up Riverside now in a pale silence. 
Presently she forced herself to a remark, for 
Elspeth said nothing, but smiled dreamily. 

“Garth is doing very well, isn’t he?” Celia 
asked. 

It was quite evident where Elspeth’s 
thoughts had been wandering. She merely 
voiced aloud now what had been in her mind. 

“Very well indeed. But I am so afraid that 
he has set his hopes too high—in spite of all my 
warnings. Because, even at best, he ’ll never 
be able to do what he wants to do.” 


SICK-BAY 63 

“And what does he want to do?” Celia asked 
listlessly. 

That gave Elspeth panse. It seemed so 
strange that any one should have known Garth 
for several months without gathering that! 

“Why, to follow the sea,’’ Elspeth said. 

“Don’t most small boys of that age want to 
follow the sea, or he firemen, or something!” 
Celia asked. 

“Most small boys,” Elspeth answered, 
“know at least that they ’d be able. He knows 
he never can . 9 7 

“That 9 s true,” mused Celia. “But he never 
says anything about it. I mean, he does n’t be¬ 
wail his fate. Well, he wouldn’t, with a 
mother like you. ’ ’ 

In the look she flashed Elspeth lay the only 
confession she had ever made of an admiration 
that was growing to worship. 

“No, he doesn’t bewail his fate, particu¬ 
larly,” Elspeth agreed. “People can’t, you 
know. It’s so miserable for themselves and 
everybody else.” 

“It’s better,” Celia said, “to keep it inside 
and commune with it privately.” 

“Build a wall that shuts you in and every- 


64 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

thing else out?” Elspeth said reflectively. 
“That ’s not it; he doesn’t do that.” 

“I wasn’t talking about Garth,” Celia put 
in. 

“Oh—I was,” s r aid Elspeth, who knew Celia 
was n’t. “He simply goes ahead as though he 
really were going to be a sea-captain. It’s a 
sort of grand ‘ let ’s-pretend,’ that’s all, in¬ 
volving the getting of all the fun there is out of 
everything. ’ ’ 

“I suppose some people haven’t enough 
imagination to pretend, ’ ’ Celia said. 

“Then that’s their misfortune,” Elspeth re¬ 
plied gravely. 

“I’d no idea it meant so much to him,” Celia 
presently said, disjointedly. 

They said nothing more as they walked east, 
leaving behind them the new hazy green of the 
trees on Riverside, and passing the nave of the 
great half-built cathedral just breaking in 
marble buds through the ground. Elspeth was 
thinking of that first night in the hospital, a 
night of pain and half-consciousness, when her 
son had laid bare to her more than even she had 
known of what it meant to him. Celia walked 
in time to a staccato whisper—a silly, persist¬ 
ent beating that would not be gone. 


SICK-BAY 65 

“Let’s pretend that Wyeth Merriman is not 
dead ... let’s pretend . . 

“He is so nice,” Garth told his mother and 
Celia. 

He was concluding a graphic description of 
the visitation of John Loomis. Celia sat with 
her hands locked about her knees, gazing at 
him curiously and intently. 

“He did come in at eight bells/’ Garth pur¬ 
sued, “and he had a marine-glass that you can 
see by night with. He knows as many stars as 
Fogger and Joan—more, I think, because he 
knows what their names are about, and long 
stories for each one. And, Mudder, he isn’t 
sick exactly, but he has to stay here for a little 
while. Miss Rutherford told me about him. 
He was shell-shocked; they just found him 
walking around without any identification-disk 
or anything. They’ve been sending him to 
lots of hospitals, till at last he got over here, 
but they can’t find out if there are people he 
knows anywhere. ’ ’ 

“What is his name?” asked Celia, suddenly. 

“John Loomis.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, ’ ’ she sighed, and dropped her head. 

“But he’s not going to stay here,” Garth 


66 GABTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

went on. “He ’s going to get a job on a ship. 
He told me so. He hasn’t any money, you 
see.” 

“I must run,” Celia said, rising decidedly. 
“Garth, if you ever meet a man called Wyeth 
Merriman here—anywhere—tell me, please.” 

“What was the matter with her!” Garth 
asked his mother, gazing after her. 

But her steps had scarcely died away before 
others sounded, and Loomis stood at the door. 
Elspeth had expected to see a hollow-eyed, 
broken figure of a man, not this tall straight 
youth, in whose face there was no sign of suffer¬ 
ing, only a faint dreamy perplexity around the 
wide-set brown eyes. He smiled frankly, and 
said, a trifle wistfully: 

“I see you ’re being entertained already.” 

“It’s only Mother,” Garth said. “I was 
telling her about the stars and all. ’ ’ 

The young man shook hands very cour¬ 
teously. Elspeth liked his hand—long, and 
cool, and solid. 

“I’m awfully glad to have found a kindred 
spirit,” he said. “We ’ve been surrepti¬ 
tiously star-gazing and spinning yarns. ’ ’ 

“Sol hear, ’ ’ Elspeth returned. “ I’m very 
grateful to you for filling some of these hospital 



SICK-BAY 


67 


hours so magically. You ’ve probably found 
out what a sea-fiend you have to deal with.” 

“I ’m another,” laughed Loomis. “I was 
born under Argo, and can’t escape my destiny. 
We get along excellently together.” 

And he gave Garth a look in which acquaint¬ 
ance had already given way to comradeship. 


CHAPTER VII 

IMPASSE 

B UT the friendship had little time in which 
to flower. Garth went home two days 
later in a taxicab, and Mr. Loomis seemed very 
indefinite about the possibility of coming to see 
him. 

It seemed years to Garth since he had left 
the apartment. Hot weather had come while he 
lay at St. Luke ’s, and now the high studio win¬ 
dows stood open to the pale summer sky. Bowls 
of flowers sat here and there, showing star- 
rily in the dim, cool light that filtered through 
half-drawn green curtains. After the chilling 
tidiness of the hospital it was a relief to see 
books on the window-seat and papers strewn on 
the table, and Rob’s pipe on the mantel where 
it did n’t belong. A relief to Elspeth, who had 
spent almost as much time as Garth at the hos¬ 
pital. Joan stood at the door to welcome them, 

tall and cool in her pretty white dress. Rob 

68 


IMPASSE 


69 


had come down hatless to the street to carry 
Garth from the taxicab. It wasn’t Silver 
Shoal—hut it was home. 

Every one had been accustomed for so long 
to thinking of Garth as inseparable from that 
high, uncompromising bed at St. Luke’s that 
the surgeon’s fair promises were half for¬ 
gotten. They regarded it as a triumph when 
he was able to get about again in his old 
fashion, hardly remembering that eventually 
he was to go much farther. The doctor 
laughed at them all. He was still terse, but 
less violent. 

‘ ‘ Stick to the crutches for a few weeks 
longer,” he commanded. “Then we ’ll use 
’em for kindling-wood. An excellent patient, 
Mrs. Pemberley. Accustomed to obedience, I 
see.” 

“Nautical upbringing,” Elspeth explained. 

Garth received several wistful notes from 
Loomis, written with pencil in a handwriting 
which betrayed the man’s unbalanced nerves 
more than his speech had done. They were nice 
little letters—mostly about plans for a cruise 
to be taken some day by himself and Garth. 
They were all signed “ J. L.” and bore no date. 
The writing was by turns strong and decora- 


70 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

tive, and weakly ordinary, full of breaks and 
dashes and points made with such erratic vigor 
as to pierce the paper. Garth replied to these 
notes at some length, heartily approving the 
plans for the cruise, but asking if Fogger might 
be allowed to come, too. 

There had been no word of Loomis for some 
days when he appeared suddenly one afternoon 
just in time for iced tea in the studio. He wore 
a double-breasted blue suit, somehow nautical in 
its cut, and carried a very new white Panama 
hat in his hand. He accepted tea and rice-cakes 
with a charming gratitude, and sat down very 
close to Garth. 

“I Ve wanted to come often ,’ y he said, “but 
IVe been ever so busy. I have my job. A 
big South American boat; rather fun, I think. 
I ’m sailing to-morrow,” he added 

“Oh, lots of fun!” Garth cried. “I don’t 
want you to go, but—” 

“Down to Rio,” Loomis went on. “Have 
you been there, Mr. Sinclair!” 

“Only down through the Bahamas,” said 
Rob, bringing cigarettes. “Gorgeous stuff to 
paint.” 

“It would be nice—that blue, if one could 
paint it. You can, I suppose,” Loomis said. 



IMPASSE 


71 


“Didn’t succeed,” Bob sigbed. “Wait a 
bit! I believe I can dig up those sketches. 
You’ve never seen them, have you, Joan?” 

Joan had not, and was all eagerness to see 
any work of her husband’s that he had never 
shown her. She had not even heard of his 
youthful cruise in southern waters. They 
were turning over the sheaf of rough sketches 
and color-notes—a glorious bundle of blue and 
violet and orange—when the bell rang. 

“Celia, I dare say,” said Elspeth, rising. 
Her familiar “Hello there!” at the door, con¬ 
firmed the guess. “Mr. Loomis is here,” she 
continued. “There’s still some coldish tea, 
nice and tinkly. It is hot, is n’t it ? ” 

Loomis rose, with one of his movements of 
graceful dignity, to be introduced. He had put 
down his glass, but still kept one of Bob’s 
sketches in his left hand. The introduction 
was never made. For Celia stood like a little 
figure of ice in the middle of the room, her 
usual delicate porcelain pallor sunk to a dead 
whiteness. She was twisting her fingers to¬ 
gether strangely. 

She could not believe that he did not know 
her, could not believe that he could stand look¬ 
ing politely and expectantly toward her with no 


72 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

flicker of recognition in his eyes, seeing her 
only as a chance caller, perhaps affected by the 
heat. For how strange they must all think her 
behavior! She put out her hand vaguely. 

“Of course . . . Mr. Loomis,” she said in a 
small voice. (“Wyeth—-Wyeth—Wyeth—’’her 
heart pounded intolerably.) 

“Please sit down,” Elspeth begged at her el¬ 
bow. “You ’re all gone, my dear! Here, by 
the window. Tea, please, Joan.” 

“It is hot —too hot,” Celia murmured. “I 
had n’t realized.” 

Oh—she couldn’t be mistaken! The way 
his hair grew, square away from his forehead, 
cutting it across solidly, firmly; the lift of his 
eyebrows; the way his smile began at one 
comer of his mouth before it reached the other. 
His hands she would have known, even without 
a sight of his face, so individual, so unmistak¬ 
able. Yet there he stood, looking at her with 
gentle concern, holding out the tea that he had 
taken from Joan. 

“Thanks, I’m quite all right,” Celia said, 
after one sip, wondering desperately what she 
must do. Would a sudden crying of his name 
startle him into memory of himself, or would 
he meet it with that same dreadful, polite, baf- 


IMPASSE 


73 


fling look? She must feel the way, she decided. 

“Mr. Loomis has just been telling us of his 
plans,” Elspeth bridged hastily, for the situa¬ 
tion was somehow unaccountably tense. 
“He’s sailing to-morrow for South America.” 

Celia half rose. “Oh, but he can’t!” she 
said. 

No one but Elspeth heard. Celia instantly 
added, “How nice!” and went on: “But 
hasn’t Mr. Loomis been ill? Should he travel 
quite so soon?” 

“I’m all right now, thanks,” Loomis said. 
“Beginning to fret after something to do. 
I’ve always loved the sea.” 

“I know,” murmured Celia. 

“Probably the ‘change of air,’ as the doctors 
would call it, will do me good, if anything. 
Have you seen these bully sketches of Mr. Sin¬ 
clair’s, Miss Hampton?” 

Celia looked absently toward the pictures he 
held out. 

“Mr. Loomis,” she said hurriedly, “forgive 
me, but—did you ever meet a man called Wyeth 
Merriman on the other side ? ’ ’ 

Rob frowned and looked toward his sister, 
who raised her eyebrows. They feared Celia 
was beginning to let slip her reason, to pursue 


74 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

her search in this way so incoherently. Loomis 
looked at her thoughtfully. 

“Wyeth Merriman—” he said slowly: “I’m 
sorry, I can’t say that I ever did.” 

He clasped his hands about his knees, and 
there showed at his wrist a small old scar. If 
there could have been any doubt at all in 
Celia’s mind, this cleared it away beyond con¬ 
tention. She lost her nerve; it was too much 
for her. She had built no wall to resist this. 

“ Wyeth—Wyeth!” she said; “oh, re¬ 
member! You must remember!” and she beat 
her hands impotently before him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again, “I don’t re¬ 
member him.” 

He looked around at the others to see if they 
were going to help this poor lady, so obviously 
overcome by the heat. 

“You ’re sure, Celia?” said Elspeth quickly. 
“Better not, perhaps.” 

“But—you know Ned Raymond, don’t you?” 
Celia was saying, more steadily. “I—I’ve 
heard him speak of you, I think. And Kenneth 
Lewis—and Dick Spofford, and—” 

But the names of these, his friends, left the 
young man’s face unlighted. 


IMPASSE 75 

“It must be another Loomis/’ he said, per¬ 
plexed. 

“Not Loomis!” Celia persisted. “Oh, not 
Loomis ! Merriman! Wyeth—-Wyeth, Merri- 
man!’ ’ 

Then, to every one’s dismay, the young man 
covered his face despairingly with his hands. 
Garth, who was rather frightened, thought his 
friend was crying; but he had never seen a 
grown man cry, and could n’t quite believe it. 

“See here, Loomis,” Robert Sinclair said, 
a hand on the man’s shoulder, “do you really 
think you ’re in any shape to sail to-morrow! 
You’d better stay with us a bit and get things 
straightened out.” 

But Loomis—for he must be called that, since 
he could not know himself as Merriman—rose 
quite square and tall. 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m all right 
unless people—people bother me. I—I’m 
afraid I’ve made a fool of myself. I don’t 
know what it is. I—I can’t stand it—having 
people ask me so many things.” He put his 
hand slowly to his square, straight forehead. 
“It hurts. It’s just being bothered that 
makes it. I’m quite all right, really. Please 



76 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

forgive me; the tea was so good, and yonr 
sketches are splendid, Mr. Sinclair. I ’ll re¬ 
member them, down there. Thank yon! ’ ’ 

He was gone. Gone utterly. He had caught 
the elevator on the wing, and by the time Rob 
reached the street there was no sign of him. 
Rob returned, panting, to the studio. Celia had 
given way altogether, and was sobbing in El¬ 
speth’s arms. Joan was distracting Garth, ar¬ 
ranging flowers in the dining-room. 

44 How can we stop him?” Celia moaned. 
44 He must be stopped; don’t you see that? 
He’s in no condition to travel alone.” 

Elspeth was silent, wondering if perhaps it 
would not be better for him to get away on his 
ship, quietly, than to stay here under Celia’s 
desperate probings. She would not be able to 
let him alone, Elspeth felt quite sure; she 
would be too anxious to find out if this were the 
moment, or this, in which his memory of him¬ 
self might come back. He seemed quite capable 
of handling his own affairs judiciously when 
people didn’t 44 bother” him. Elspeth saw 
again that hunted, haunted look in his brown 
eyes, as his brain beat against an unrecognized 
barrier that somehow hurt it. 

“It’s so strange,” Celia faltered. 44 It 


IMPASSE 


77 


seems to be just that be does n’t remember any 
one be ever knew before, yet be evidently knows 
about all sorts of things be bimself used to do. 
Does he think be was John Loomis when be did 
them? Doesn’t be remember things he did 
with other people, or only alone 1 Ob, it’s too 
much for me. And why John Loomis— why?” 

Elspetb shook her head. “ Shell-shock is 
baffling. One hears such strange stories; and 
they say that the slightest, queerest thing may 
bring everything back suddenly.” 

“How can we stop him!” Celia repeated. 
“Oh, stop him from sailing on that ship!” 

“It would be easy enough to find out what 
boat sails for Rio to-morrow,” said Rob, “in 
the paper. ’ 9 

But the shipping-news held no mention of 
such a vessel. 

“Can that have been imaginary?” Celia 
wondered aloud. “Was he really going to sail 
at all? Oh, if he’s all alone now, in New York, 
not knowing—” 

“My dear,” Elspeth said, “I don’t think you 
quite do him justice. You ’re talking as if he 
were a lunatic. He’s absolutely sane and com¬ 
pletely charming. It’s just that he’s John 
Loomis, not Wyeth Merriman. Until Merri- 


78 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

man comes back, I don’t think we can safely 
meddle with Loomis’s affairs. He knows what 
he’s about; you can’t expect him to be inter¬ 
ested in some one he never heard of. Oh, I 
know how hard it is! ” 

“But he ’ll never come back,” said Celia, 
blankly. “Neither Loomis nor Merriman. 
What would bring him back? 1 have no power 
to, ’ ’ she added with a bitter laugh. 

The roses could hold little of Garth’s atten¬ 
tion. He leaned in the dining-room doorway 
and looked with some impatience upon Celia. 
He was rather glad his friend had gone where 
he wouldn’t be bothered. 

“Of course he ’ll come back,” Garth said, 
with decision. “He and Fogger and I are 
going on a cruise some time—he promised. 
He’s coming to see me again when he gets in. 
He’s having an awfully nice time the way he 
is; I don’t see why you want him to be some¬ 
body else.” 

“Miss Hampton isn’t having a nice time 
while he’s the way he is,” Elspeth said. 

She did not mean it for reproach, but 
Celia felt suddenly ashamed of the somewhat 
melodramatic scene she had created. A score 
of thoughts raced through her mind. Was she 



IMPASSE 


79 


not selfish? If he was happier now—as John 
Loomis— Could he learn to love her all over 
again—a new Celia, perhaps, worthier than her 
whom Wyeth Merriman had loved? She sat 
very still. Elspeth, watching, saw the first 
gleam of that new Celia dawn quietly in her 
fixed eyes. 


CHAPTEE yin 


SOME TRIFLING PRESENTATIONS 

I T was not until Garth’s birthday that the 
surgeon’s promise came true, and that was 
early in September. Nine years old! It was 
hard for Elspeth to believe that; nine years is 
so very nearly ten. 

There was a letter from Jim, miraculously on 
time, addressed to ‘ 1 Garth Pemberley, A.B.” 
Garth shook his head when he saw that “A.B.,” 
which signified “able-bodied seaman”—but 
there he stood, straight and moderately steady, 
in the middle of the room, with the envelope in 
his hand. The crutches were not yet smashed 
to kindling-wood, but they had been abandoned 
for the first time, and were put oft with the be¬ 
ginning of his new year. That was even harder 
for Elspeth to believe. How she wished for 
Jim, to share their wonder and their joy! 
Garth brought the letter to his mother—a little 
self-conscious, feeling all eyes upon his achieve¬ 
ment. It was a rather one-sided gait, and 

80 


TBIFLING PBESENTATIONS 81 

would always be; but to him it seemed the free¬ 
dom of wings. 

Together they read the letter, which was by 
turns nonsensical and tender after Jim’s way; 
and Garth’s arm lay across his mother’s shoul¬ 
der. Elspeth had suddenly the oddest feeling 
that it was not for support, but in protection. 
She looked up at him curiously—she sat on a 
low chair—and caught for the first time a 
strange, illuminating premonition of what it 
would be some day to have a tall son, some one 
as big and as kind as Jim, on whose arm she 
might depend. The next moment he lost his 
balance in quite the old way, and caught at her 
knee. She held him very tight, and laughed at 
herself, hiding her face in the crisp bronze of 
his hair. 

By chance, there arrived, too, a letter from 
John Loomis, and a packet addressed in his 
angular, still erratic hand. It contained a 
silver chain, possibly linked together by some 
Inca craftsman, so curious and ancient was its 
fashioning. 

To snap your whistle on, Bo’sun, instead of a lan¬ 
yard [wrote Loomis]. I traded for it with an old 
Indian who might have been an Inca himself—he cer¬ 
tainly looked antiquated enough. 


82 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Loomis did not explain where he was (evi¬ 
dently not in Rio!) or what his plans might be, 
but he seemed to be enjoying things thoroughly. 
Garth looped the chain joyously about his 
neck; it was almost too good to be true— 
Spanish treasure his very own, to hang a 
whistle or a compass on. Celia, who was 
assisting at what promised to be a birthday 
feast, reached for the letter. 

“Bits of his own handwriting gleam 
through,” she said musingly, “just as bits of 
himself gleamed through, that day. Elspeth, 
he ’d think it strange of me to write him, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

“I suppose he would,” Elspeth agreed, 
“considering that he thinks he ’s met you only 
once. Garth might discourse about you some¬ 
what in his next letter.” 

“Will you, Garth?” Celia said plaintively. 
“It might help.” 

Garth wondered what he should find to say 
about her—he wanted to write principally of 
the silver chain—but he gave a gallant assent. 

Parcels came from unexpected quarters that 
day. Who could have imagined that there 
would be one bearing the Quimpaug postmark? 
Who, in Quimpaug, could have remembered 



TRIFLING PRESENTATIONS 83 

Garth's birthday? The letter that accom¬ 
panied the package solved the question. It 
was headed, u Silver Shoal Light," and it was 
from ’Bijah Dawson, dear old Cap'n ’Bijah, 
who had come to keep the light now that the 
Pemberleys had grudgingly returned to civili¬ 
zation. 

Garth Pemberley, Dear Friend and Skipper [wrote 
the captain, in the gnarled remnants of a flourishing 
handwriting that must surely have been taught him 
in a country school fifty years before]. I guess may 
be you will be suprized to hear from the old man 
but he rememberin this date to be some thing extry, 
reckoned I might take pen in hand as should of done 
long sence. Me and Caleb is both in good helth and 
I know you will be pleased to hear the Light she is 
goin strong only mising the Skipper and his Pa 
some thing terruble. Last winter after your leaving 
was a mighty rough season, real catchy spells causin 
ice to form around the Shoal but no inconveniance ex- 
perenced in boat travel to Quimpaug. One pile of 
the pier went out, same was soon replaced by the 
old man Caleb helpin. This year no sech exitement 
as was caused last at this date by the goins on of 
them Boshes as you remember. I am aimin to send 
you a trifling presentation made by the old man in 
my spare moments of liesure. Rememberin your han¬ 
kerings to-wards the Sea and all creeturs in same I 
reckoned this might be cute, you not seein any such 
likely down to the City. My respects to your Ma and 


84 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Miss Joan now I presume called Mrs. Sinclare. A 
line from your Family stating news would be greatly 
apreshiciated by all at Silver Shoal, them not forget- 
tin good friends. Will now close, wishin the Skip¬ 
per good luck and no head-winds. 

Rsptfly yours, 

Abijah Dawson, Keeper. 

Despite their eagerness to behold the “tri¬ 
fling presentation/ * the Pemberleys dwelled 
long upon the letter, which, on rereading, 
proved to be even more delightful than at first. 
Elspeth gave it a third chuckling perusal, while 
Garth snapped the cord of the package with his 
knife. The ‘‘presentation’’ was wrapped in 
much rumpled paper, but Garth extracted it at 
last. Upon a standing photograph frame of 
the cheapest kind, the Cap hi had laboriously 
glued a myriad tiny shells, completely hiding 
the original material, whatever it may have 

been. The interstices he had painted carefully 

« 

with red lead, and shellacked the whole so that 
it glittered unnaturally. It was entirely 
hideous; but it had been fashioned for love, in 
the blessed living-room of Silver Shoal. 

“Ye gods!” ejaculated Rob, and Elspeth 
motioned silence. 

For Garth, to whom intrinsic beauty was 


TRIFLING PRESENTATIONS 85 

shadowy, saw, not the ghastly structure of 
shells and glue, but the Cap’n toiling to make 
it, with his cap on the back of his grizzled head, 
and his pipe gone out, and his materials spread 
on the kitchen-table under the window that 
looked out on nothing hut the sea. 

“It’s perfectly beautiful!” said Garth ear¬ 
nestly, clasping the frame to him. “Wait a 
minute! I know what must he in it—wait!’ ’ 

They waited, while he made off to his own 
room, whence sounds of rummaging in his desk 
could presently he heard. 

“My nephew—and he admires it!” groaned 
Rob. 

“I remember liking things, as a child, that 
really were hideous,” Celia said. “Things 
like that, made of something quite inappropri¬ 
ate.” 

Elspeth didn’t try to explain; she let their 
talk flit on. And they would only have turned 
on her aghast if she had quietly told them that 
she, too, thought the frame was “perfectly 
beautiful.” Garth returned, hearing his gift, 
and very carefully minding his step—still so 
new and wonderful to him. 

“There!” he announced. “That ’s what 
must be in it, of course!” and he reached up to 


86 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

put the frame in the very middle of the mantel¬ 
piece. 

It now held, surrounded by the glittering 
shells, a snap-shot of Silver Shoal Light, with 
the Ailouros at anchor, and a swell just break¬ 
ing into foam at the north end of the rock. 

“The very thing!” Rob said. “Er—don't 
you want to have it in your room, though?” 

“Of course, afterward,” said Garth. “But 
I thought you'd all want to be able to look at 
it till to-night.” 

“I—I appreciate the privilege,” Rob said. 

But Elspeth drew her son within her arm, 
that they might look together at the picture. 

“Let’s write thank-you letters now,” pro¬ 
posed Garth, who never approved of postpon¬ 
ing things. 

“Which shall we write first?” his mother 
asked. “Fogger’s?” 

“Let’s write first of all to Cap’n ’Bijah!” 
Garth said, even while he fingered the Inca 
chain that still circled his neck. 


CHAPTER IX 


PEACE 

T HAT autumn swept the world on in a 
tumult of hope. The Somme offensive 
had come to a tremendous head; the American 
soldiers had done gallant things. In the 
United States, the fourth Liberty Loan fol¬ 
lowed on the heels of the fourth draft. 

Robert Sinclair, rejected time and again on 
account of some hypothetical infirmity, found 
himself suddenly drafted and spirited away to 
camp, leaving a class at the Three Arts dan¬ 
gling. A new service-flag, with two stars, 
hung in the window of the studio, and the Sin- 
clair-Pemberley family, shorn now of both its 
men, turned whimsically to Garth as head of 
the household. 

When, on the last day of October, Turkey un¬ 
conditionally surrendered, the world listened, 
tense, for the next nail to be driven in the coffin- 
lid of the enemy. And the world heard. 

It was a day of such still autumn peace that 

87 


88 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

country byways summoned too irresistibly to 
go unheeded. Joan and Elspeth and Garth, 
filled with the spirit of adventure, packed lunch 
in two brief-cases and set forth on a ferry-boat, 
they knew not whither. New York dropped 
away astern till it seemed the fantastic mirage 
of a cardboard town floating on the water. A 
curious site for the world’s greatest city, after 
all, this island which looked as though it might 
at any moment sink under its gigantic load! 
The boat swung a little, and in the huddled sky¬ 
line Broadway suddenly opened an immense 
gash—a canyon beside the incredible height of 
the Woolworth Building. Broadway! How 
remote and impossible it seemed; just a slit in 
that carven cluster of pearly battlements 
fading astern. 

Garth, who had not seen so many boats for 
months, had no eyes for Manhattan, however. 
He beamed upon each tug as on a personal 
friend, and summoned his relatives in ecstasy 
to look at a great camouflaged troop-ship, glid¬ 
ing along quietly in her crazy coat of zebra 
stripes. And then— 

“Oh, listen!” he cried. “Oh, I’d almost 
forgotten! Why didn’t we ever come be¬ 
fore!” 


PEACE 


89 


It was the hell-buoy on Robbins Reef, chim¬ 
ing dolefully as it rose and fell in the tideway. 
Beyond, the little reef lighthouse lifted its 
squat cylindrical tower. Elspeth, too, had al¬ 
most forgotten. The sound of the bell, the 
sight of the polished hexagonal lantern and the 
black iron gallery, caught her somehow fiercely 
with a rush of homesickness she had not ex¬ 
pected. 

“Why didn’t we come before!” Garth in¬ 
sisted. “Boats—and that light, and the Nar- 

\ 

rows, and everything! ’ 9 

“And all for five cents,” Joan laughed. 

“It’s been winter,” Elspeth apologized, 
“except when it was summer—and then you 
weren’t seaworthy enough even for ferry-boat 
travel. ’ ’ 

“That’s so,” Garth agreed with a sigh. 
“But we can do it now, often. Every day!” 

“What about St. Hubert’s!” his mother re¬ 
minded him. 

Garth subsided into resigned silence. St. 
Hubert’s he persisted in regarding as an acci¬ 
dent in his existence—something which inter¬ 
fered with his own affairs and could be es¬ 
caped at will. 

The boat took the adventurers to Staten Is- 



90 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

land, and from the ferry-house they made their 
way, on a random-selected trolley-car, to a 
place far more like country than anything they 
had seen for some time. They climbed a soli¬ 
tary and alluring byway, which led them, after 
a freakish course up a hillside of sere trees, to 
the brow of a splendid height, open and filled 
with sun and wind. Far below, the bay spread 
a blue expanse, dotted with insignificant ships. 
The Narrows opened seaward to the right; far 
to the left Manhattan showed dimly, a tiny 
cluster of opalescent towers. 

“This is exciting!” Joan cried. “Why 
aren’t we able to break the evil spell and get 
away from town oftener? I agree with 
Garth.” 

“Why didn’t we bring Celia?” Elspeth 
said. 

“Bother; why didn’t we!” Joan agreed. 
“She needs to get out on a hill and eat with her 
fingers . 9 9 

Indeed, Celia had been going about of late 
like a small, pallid nun, consecrated to some 
secret vow or penance. Garth couldn’t ex¬ 
actly imagine Miss Hampton eating with her 
fingers. How nice it was to be able to do that, 
after an eternity of silver and linen and Havi- 


PEACE 


91 


land china, however pleasant and civilized! 
How joyous to sit on a scratchy rock instead of 
a chair, with dead grass underfoot, and leaves 
rustling down in the silence, and now and then 
a gust of salt wind to set every fallen leaf 
awhirl and snatch an insecurely held paper 
napkin from some one r s lap! 

It was early in the afternoon that the strange 
thing happened—strange, and terrifying, and 
wildly beautiful. Suddenly, out of the still¬ 
ness, whistles began to blow, whistles from the 
factories and power-houses that bordered the 
island, below. Every boat in the harbor raised 
her voice in a prolonged bellow; the sound 
swelled, a distant, solemn, unflagging scream 
of exultation. Nothing, there on the hill, but 
the slow zigzag floating of falling leaves, and 
the insistent, terrible, wonderful crying of the 
whistles. 

The three on the hill rose to their feet and 
looked strangely at one another. Only one 
thing could possibly be in any mind. 

“The war—is over,” said Elspeth, queerly. 

A moment more they stood there, while the 
far, gigantic sound swept and swelled over 
them; then they could not wait to find if it was 
true. Madly they stuffed the brief-cases and 


92 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

hurried down to the trolley-tracks. The car- 
conductor was the first to confirm the news. 

It was a city gone mad that they reached. 
i ‘The war is over—the Kaiser has abdicated— 
the armistice is signed!” People were laugh¬ 
ing and crying and yelling. The crowds were 
almost impassable. Packed taxicabs blew 
their horns incessantly. From the tall down¬ 
town buildings showers of paper scraps fell 
thick on the surging crowd, and streamers of 
ticker-tape writhed down. Elspeth thought 
they should never get home safely; they 
reached the studio exhausted and disheveled. 
Below in the street, flags waved, motor-horns 
blared, and people shouted incoherently. 

“Will Fogger come right home?” It was 
Garth’s first question, when they had somewhat 
recovered from their struggle through the mob. 

But the destroyers were busy still, it seemed. 
There came the news of the German naval sur¬ 
render. Garth spent all his spare time prone 
over a newspaper or an illustrated weekly, 
poring over every detail of that vast and im¬ 
pressive ceremony. Had his father’s ship 
been one of those between which the endless 
gray line of enemy vessels had grimly 
steamed? Had his father been there, standing 


PEACE 


93 


silent on his bridge, to watch the mighty pro¬ 
cession pass? No news: not a cable, not a 
letter, nothing. 

More than a year is a long time for a 
person’s Fogger to be away, especially if, nntil 
that time, he has never gone for more than 
twelve hours. And yet—think of all the little 
boys whose Foggers had been killed, and would 
never come back at all. Garth couldn’t help 
thinking of that, even though there was peace 
now on the seas as well as on land. 


CHAPTER X 


JOY IN THE MORNING 

T HEN it was Christmas eve again—how the 
time tripped by!—with still no news of 
Jim, and from Rob admirably restrained 
letters of regret that he could not get leave for 
Christmas. But, great as were the echoes of 
his name about the galleries, he was nothing 
but Sergeant Sinclair in camp, and not a very 
efficient sergeant at that. So it couldn’t be a 
very festive Christmas eve, with Jim’s where¬ 
abouts unknown and Rob an exile eating com¬ 
missariat chicken and cranberry in a mess-hall. 

Joan played carols and Garth picked out 
what he could of them upon the violin, peer¬ 
ing over her shoulder at the piano, and they 
all three sang, a lonely little trio, there in the 
big, dusky studio. Three-branched candle¬ 
sticks at the windows bore steady golden flames 
aloft; a welcoming fire hummed on the green- 
tiled hearth. 

“Peace on earth, good will toward men,” 
sang Garth. “Peace, peace on earth!” 

94 


JOY IN THE MORNING 


95 


Yes, the first Christmas of peace. But where 
was Destroyer 026? On what secret orders 
was she bound? Was she rolling’ to the mid-sea 
waves now, with merriment in her ward-room 
and white water slashing across her decks? 
There would be merriment if Fogger was there! 
But perhaps it was his watch on the bridge, and 
he was standing with keen eyes leveled across 
the black waters, seeing the marvels that do go 
upon the sea on Christmas eve. Fishes light¬ 
ing lanterns of phosphor; slow, shimmering 
sea-beasts circling up from the soundless 
caverns. ... 0 ye whales and all that move in 
the waters, bless ye the Lord . . . These were 
Garth’s jumbled thoughts as he fell asleep. 

He awoke in the hush of the night with a 
strange, breathless feeling of having been sum¬ 
moned awake. The Christmas star had passed 
from the east and was setting over purple-dark 
housetops. There was no sound; the earth lay 
waiting for Christmas morning. But it was 
not the waiting peace without that had wak¬ 
ened him; something nearer, something in the 
room, close beside his bed, held his drowsy 
eyes. His mother stood there in her mist-gray 
kimono, her dark hair spreading like shadow 
over her shoulders, and beside her was a tall 


96 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

dark figure that almost melted into the gloom 
beyond. Just a shifting gleam of silver at his 
throat, on the anchor and bars broidered across 
his collar. 

But Garth had seen Fogger that way many 
times—not exactly in a dream; he had even 
sat up in bed and stared into the dark, till Fog¬ 
ger had faded away and Garth realized that he 
had never been there at all. He sat up, now, 
rubbing his eyes, and the shadow that was his 
mother whispered, “Ssh!” The other shadow 
bent, then, and kissed his hair. Light as a 
dream-kiss it was, but Garth, putting out his 
hands uncertainly, touched a real serge sleeve 
with a warm, strong arm inside it. But when 
he tried to hold it, he found that he was grasp¬ 
ing the blanket, and that both the shadows 
were gone. He lay down again. 

“That was the realest, queerest one of all,” 
he thought. 

He tried to keep awake to see if anything 
would happen again, but though he thought he 
never stopped looking at the star, he found that 
the next thing he saw was sunshine at the win¬ 
dow and his mother smiling beside him. 

“Merry Christmas, lazybones!” said she. 
“Up, up, there’s merrymaking abroad.’’ 


JOY IN THE MORNING 97 

He sat up at once, still full of the vision of the 
night. 

“You know, Mudder,” he said, “I had the 
queerest thing, —a dream, sort of, only realer. 
I thought you and Fogger were standing right 
here, and I felt his sleeve, even; it was real, 
only it didn’t stay.” 

“How funny,” said Elspeth. “I had a very 
real dream about Fogger, too. Hurry up, now 
—and do put on a decent necktie. ’ ’ 

Garth did hurry; there is a compelling sense 
of excitement about Christmas morning. No 
one was in the studio when he sallied out into it. 
He thought he would lie in wait for his Aunt 
Joan beneath the sprig of mistletoe which 
swung between the blue and gold portieres. 
He stood looking up at it and wondering a little 
where Joan and his mother were, when sud¬ 
denly he was swept off his feet into the smother¬ 
ing embrace of some one who had come noise¬ 
lessly behind him. 

“If you will stand under mistletoe!” said a 
dear, half-strange, yet wholly familiar voice. 
“If you will —Oh, Pern! Oh, Pern!” 

He was being crushed against a blue serge 
coat; the anchor glittered close to his be¬ 
wildered eyes, and—oh, dare he look? It was 


98 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

true, true, true,—the brown face above his, the 
tawny tumbled hair, the keen, whimsical, sea- 
gray eyes. It couldn’t be a dream now; it 
was n’t a dream—it was Fogger, truly Fogger, 
on Christmas day in the morning! 

Elspeth was there too, then, and how the 
three of them ever managed to disentangle 
themselves from the huge confusion of hugs 
was a wonder. How can you know what to say 
first, after a year? Words came tumbling 
somehow, all mixed up, and frequently muffled 
by Garth’s burying his face in sudden ecstasy 
in the blue serge coat. 

“Did you know?” he asked all at once, with 
accusing eyes on his mother. 

No, she hadn’t known. Fogger had walked 
in as calm as you please at 12:15 last night, 
very much surprised that his cable hadn’t 
come. 

“You thought your dream was queer,” said 
Elspeth; “can you imagine mine, when I cau¬ 
tiously opened the door an inch and there was 
a great tall something in a long cloak, who 
burst open the door and snatched me?” 

Garth thought he could imagine, and 
clutched Jim wordlessly, with a squeak of rap¬ 
ture. 


99 


JOY IN THE MORNING 

So many things to ask and tell and do! Fog- 
ger seemed to be more amazed and interested 
by the efficiency of Garth’s sea-legs than any¬ 
thing else. 

“A credit to any quarter-deck,” was Jim’s 
ultimate opinion, after a turn up and down the 
room with his son. “And now let’s heave to 
and tackle the toast. I have n’t eaten for fully 
a thousand years, and I can no longer stand 
being to loo’ard of the coffee and bacon.” 

No use recording the happenings of that day. 
No one did anything but talk, and Jim was so 
much the most exciting Christmas present that 
little attention was paid to other gifts. Celia 
drifted in for high tea. Christmas alone in 
town is not much fun; Elspeth regretted that 
she had not been asked for the day. 

“So it’s really the famous you?” Celia 
said curiously to Jim. 

“Famous?” he murmured. 

“Your son has written you in letters of gold 
all over my mind, ’ ’ she told him. 

“Fie!” said Jim, shooting a reproachful 
twinkle at Garth. 

“So how could I help but be keen to meet 
you?” Celia pursued. “But he’s been 
having a very hard time with me. I’m afraid 


100 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

he ’s given me up; haven’t you, Garth? I’m 
such a frightful landlubber, you know.” 

Garth had given her up, but he said, “Oh, 
no!’ ’ gallantly. 

“But I’m trying very hard to learn to like 
the sea. People seem to want me to,” she 
added, looking away and thinking of Wyeth 
Merriman who was John Loomis. 

“Town’s no place to learn to like the 
sea,” said Jim, who knew all about Celia. 
“You’ll have to come to us some time, and 
slop about and find out what we ’re talking 
of.” 

A gleam kindled Garth’s face; he plucked his 
father by the coat. 

“But where ’ll we be, to do any slopping 
about?” he demanded, swiftly, with a hopeful 
inflection. “Just here all the time.” 

“Ah!” said Jim. 

Garth wheeled to his mother. 

“What does he mean?” he cried. “Do you 
know, Mudder?” 

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Elspeth. 
“You ought to be acquainted with his air-of- 
mystery manner by this time. ’ ’ 

“I’d forgotten, almost,” said Garth. “Do 
you mean we ’ll be somewhere else, Fogger, 


JOY IN THE MORNING 101 

some time, where we can slop about with the 
sea?” 

“Ask me nothing, boy,” said Jim, “for 1 
know nothing. But I can safely assure you 
that when you ’re eighty-two you won’t be 
living in Uncle Rob’s studio apartment.” 

And that was all the satisfaction any one 
could get out of Lieutenant J. E. Pemberley. 

It seemed, however, as though Jim’s next 
duty would have little to do with the sea. It 
was to be a series of odd jobs at the Brooklyn 
Navy-Yard. “And my only ship,” said he, 
“will be an occasional ferry-boat.” Elspeth 
suggested that they should move to Brooklyn, 
nearer the job, but her husband did not assent. 

“Not worth while,” he explained ambig¬ 
uously, “for so short a time. If the Robs will 
let us stay on for a bit, stay we will. What’s 
the use of moving twice ? ’ ’ 

“But where are we going, when and if we 
go ? ” his family besought him. 4 ‘ Explain your¬ 
self, man!” 

“I cannot explain because I do not know,” 
Jim replied virtuously. “I base future hope 
on vague surmise. ’ ’ 

But before the Navy-Yard summoned him 
there was a joyous fortnight of leave when 


102 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

neither Destroyer 026 nor Brooklyn had any 
claim on him. Two weeks is little enough at 
that, after a year of absence. Garth, whose 
Christmas vacation it was, never left his father 
for a moment, only too well aware of the re¬ 
spective shadows of St. Hubert *s and the Navy- 
Yard looming ever closer to their elbows. 


CHAPTER XI 


SILVEB SHOAL SUMMONS 

G ARTH, who was sprawled upon the floor 
with an outspread map occupying most 
of the surrounding carpet space, looked up as 
his father came into the room. Jim, regard¬ 
less of official blue serge, seated himself also 
upon the floor and dropped an arm across his 
son’s shoulders. 

“It’s good to have you, Pern,” he murmured. 
‘ ‘ Such a confoundedly long time it was! ’’ 
“Confoundedly,” Garth agreed, with warmth. 
“Do you know, Pogger, I ’ve thought of a new 
way through the Archipelago. Torres Straits, 
and then—look—” 

He indicated a serpentine course with an un¬ 
hesitating forefinger. Jim looked briefly at 
the map and for a long time at his son. 

“Don’t you ever think about anything but the 
sea, old boy?” 

Garth lifted his nose from its proximity to 
the Java Sea and said: 

103 



104 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“No, of course I don’t. Oh, not every 
minute, but mostly other times. Don’t you?” 

“All the time you ’re at St. Hubert’s learn¬ 
ing quite different things, and all the time you 
were in hospital being hurt, and—and all the 
time?” Jim ended comprehensively. 

“Of course,” said Garth, more decidedly 
than before. 

Jim sighed, cast about him for a moment, and 
said: 

“I wonder if it would make us frightfully un¬ 
happy, you and me, to go and see how Silver 
Shoal is faring without us ? ” 

Garth gazed at his father for a long, startled 
moment. Then the map crackled, as, with one 
knee in the Indian Ocean, he clutched Jim. 

“It would make me awfully unhappy,” he 
said. “But it would be a nice kind. It—it 
would be like putting iodine on your finger 
when you’d cut it; hurt like fits and then 
make you feel better afterward. Would n’t it? 
Don’t you see?” 

“I do, yes. I’d almost reached the same 
conclusion. But I wanted you to think so, 
too.” 

Elspeth and Joan shook their heads when 
they heard of the proposition. 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 105 

“You ’re very brave people,” said Elspeth. 
“I’m not brave enough to go back to Silver 
Shoal.” 

“Even I am not,” said Joan. “Yet I was 
but a stranger and an interloper.” 

But Jim and Garth bent conspirator-like 
over time-tables that evening, with the set, rapt 
faces of the consecrated. 

“But, Mudder, haven’t I any of my other 
clothes? I can’t go back in—this!” 

“This,” scornfully indicated, was an Eton 
collar. Garth sat upon the edge of his bed in 
the dawn, half clad and protesting bitterly. 
There was the English sailor-suit, to be sure. 
It had not been worn for a year, not since St. 
Hubert’s decreed conventional school-boy at¬ 
tire. i i But it was too big for you, ’ ’ Elspeth re¬ 
flected. The sailor-suit was exhumed with 
some difficulty from the bottom of a trunk. 
Jim put a belathered face in at the door to com¬ 
ment and approve. He measured Garth and 
the sailor-suit with an eye in which doubt 
dawned and settled. 

“Ship it to a refugee!” he observed, as Els¬ 
peth extricated her son from the strangle-hold 
of the jumper. “It will delight the heart of a 


106 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

potential mariner of France—unless he’s 
sprung all the seams.’’ 

These had indeed cracked an alarming warn¬ 
ing, and Garth was faced with the abhorred 
tweed. 

“She won’t know me,” he mourned. “She 
won’t want to know me!” 

“She,” somewhat vaguely, meant Silver 
Shoal Light. 

Jim did not wear his cape, though Garth 
urged it in favor of its picturesque appearance. 

“Too much of a nuisance,” Jim said. 
i ‘ Have you forgotten the winds of Silver Shoal 
in midwinter? I’d he blown off the rock like a 
tops’l in a typhoon.” 

At the last moment Elspeth whispered to her 
son a secret message to the place they had all 
loved so greatly, and he went off a bit sober, 
holding Jim’s hand. He held it rather tightly, 
because walking—even now—was not an easy 
thing, nor would it ever be. Jim carried a small 
bag which contained the requisites of the two. 
“Very masculine,” had been Elspeth’s com¬ 
ment, as she had stirred the contents about with 
an inquiring finger. 

The train was a swift and comparatively 
silent express, and conversation was possible. 



SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 107 

From disjointed observations about the land¬ 
scape “on the starboard beam,” as Garth put 
it, they fell to discussing the war on the seas 
and Jim’s part in it, and the uninteresting 
miles flew by unnoticed. 

Jim refused to eat at Tewksville Junction; 
“a pestilential hole,” he called it, “full of fossil 
doughnuts and petrified pie.” The dining-car 
offered a substitute, and Garth, having never 
before experienced its unique charms, was de¬ 
lighted. 

“I feel,” said he, putting down his clinking 
goblet and gazing magnificently out at the fly¬ 
ing telegraph-poles, “exactly like a Roman 
emperor.” 

“Indeed?” said Jim. “Had Caesar a private 
dining-car? Or was it Justinian? These things 
slip one’s memory; but you ’re a St. Huber- 
tian. ’ ’ 

“You know what I mean , Fog—Father.” 

Jim’s lip twitched whimsically. 

“ ‘Father,’ ” he mused inwardly. “And 
has St. Hubert’s done that? Or is it because 
I’ve been away? Or is it just because he’s a 
twelvemonth nearer being a Boy?” 

It was “Fogger” still for the good intimate 
moments, “Fogger” always, in thought, but a 


108 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

year ago it would have been equally so, even 
with these ears of the world listening. 

The dingy Tewksville Junction station was 
the first familiar landmark; the shuttle- 
train waiting for the boat passengers was the 
second. 

“Even the same conductor!” Garth whis¬ 
pered. 

“You ’re not like Rip Van Winkle,’’ Jim 
said. “It ’s really not been so long, you 
know.” 

S. S. Pettasantuck was the most gratifying 
landmark. She lay placidly at her pier, com¬ 
fortingly unchanged, except for a fresh coat of 
paint and a new burgee at her flagstaff. The 
engine-room bell was the same—the short, clear 
stroke, the jingle. Full speed ahead! The 
burgee snapped out; the churned water at the 
pier-head dropped astern as the wake 
straightened and settled to foam-shot green. 
The Pettasantuck fell into her old course, 
bound for Quimpaug at the mouth of the bay. 

Garth rambled about the deck, assuring him¬ 
self that the old steamer was just as she had al¬ 
ways been, wondering wistfully whether she re¬ 
membered him. The Pettasantuck snorted an 
irritated warning to a tug that swung impu- 



SILVEE SHOAL SUMMONS 109 


denly under her nose, and the sudden whoop of 
her whistle made Garth jump. 

‘ 4 That’s a lubberly trick,” Jim said. “You 
never used to do that, not even when a whole 
herd of tugs bleated and bellowed at us till the 
fog split.” 

“It was just because I was expecting her to 
every minute, and hoping she would,” Garth 
explained in a somewhat unsatisfactory fash¬ 
ion. 

His eyes fled perpetually landward to catch 
the first gray glint of Quimpaug’s roofs cling¬ 
ing like barnacles to the hill above the harbor. 
Just as the steamer swung toward the port, he 
snatched his hand from his father’s and leaned 
over the rail flourishing a wild arm toward a 
patched sail that was bobbing out from behind 
the point. 

“Look, Fogger! Is it the Ailouros? Oh—” 

Jim, with a swift hand beneath his son’s arm, 
swung him bodily across the deck, and threw 
such inspired zeal into his comments on a 
rather stupid lighter which was coming in, that 
Garth was wholly deceived and did not look 
back at the cat-boat. But Jim, with a quicker 
eye, had recognized her instantly; his own boat, 
how could he mistake her? He had seen what 


110 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

he hoped Garth had not: the rust-streaked 
stern, the dirty cockpit, the untidy tangle of 
ropes, the slit and ill-patched canvas, and the 
slovenly fisherman huddled coldly against the 
tiller with his muddy boots cocked over the 
coaming. Jim talked on violently for some 
time after the lighter had fallen astern, and 
realized all at once that his grip on Garth’s 
shoulder was inhumanly tight. 

On the pier at Quimpaug a young man in 
rubber boots informed them that the hotel was 
closed in winter. 

“I did feel like Rip Van Winkle, then,” 
Garth confided to his father afterward. “I al¬ 
most looked to see if I had a long white beard.” 

“We don’t want the hotel, thanks,” said 
Jim, now. “We want a boat.” 

The young man stared, but presently in¬ 
formed them that he himself had a boat. 

“Good,” said Jim. “We want to go out to 
Silver Shoal Light.” 

“Vis’tors ain’t been ’lowed out to the Light 
this year,” the young man said. “Dunno 
whether they’ve changed the rulin’ sence the 
armistick, but I reckon not. Powerful cold, 
anyways. ’ ’ 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 111 

“We want to go,” said Jim, “to Silver Shoal 
Light. ’’ 

The rubber-booted one shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. He looked narrowly at Jim, and ob¬ 
served: 

“If you ’re a bony-fide navy officer I s’pose 
it’s all right. But,” he added imperson¬ 
ally, “we had some spy trouble out ther’ last 
year.” 

“Indeed?” said Jim. 

“Yus,” said the man, who had led them to 
his craft—a battered power cat-boat, “I 
wa’n’t here myself; be’n fishin’ other pa’ts 
some consid’able years. But ’t was all round, 
how it happent. Likely you heard tell on it off 
the papers.” 

Jim intimated ignorance of the affair. 

“Dumed German that had be’n passin’ him¬ 
self off fer some furriner snuck up one night 
an’ kotched the keeper (’twa’n’t the keeper 
’at ’s ther’ now) an’ his wife out in their boat, 
an’ then he went out to the Light whar ther’ was 
on’y one pore female o’ some kind an’ a little 
kid that couldn’t make no use of his laigs no¬ 
how, an’ tied ’em both up, an’ blowed out the 
light so’s to pile up a transport was a-comin’ 


112 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

down, onto the rocks. Huh! durned spy!” 

Garth smothered a curious squeak, and Jim 
said mildly: 

“Dear me! And what then?” 

“By jinginny, that young ’un got hisself 
down the stairs (the woman she was tied up to 
the wall so’s she couldn’t waggle an eye- 
winker), an’ he got him a big knife an’ hiked it 
along back up an’ got her off. An’ she run 
licketty-wiggle up the tower an’ lit up the light 
an’ the transport was a-comin’ down jest as 
slick’s you please, purty nigh onto the Reef. 
Guy! ’Bijah Dawson, keeps the Light now, tolt 
it to me, an’ I thought mebbe he was thinkin’ 
o’ some movie picksher-show up to Milltown; 
but no sirree sir, it’s O.K.” 

“It sounds,” said Jim, “distinctly improb¬ 
able. ’ ’ 

Garth made no comment on this account of 
his adventures, and his fingers tightened on 
Jim’s arm. For out in the gray sea before 
them Silver Shoal lifted its white tower above 
its gray-roofed house. The great storm- 
windows were in place, and no flower-boxes 
brightened the wall beneath the green shutters. 
Where the Ailouros had been used to rise and 
fall and tilt like a dreaming gull, the squat 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 113 

Lydia now butted her somber nose methodi¬ 
cally at her buoy. 

“It’s almost light-up time,” Garth mur¬ 
mured. “We must be there at light-up time.” 

He of the rubber boots looked inquiringly at 
Garth, then hastily in the direction of Silver 
Shoal’s landing, where an irate figure stood 
waving a warning arm. 

“I tolt you, Sam, not to bring no folks out 
here!” shouted this person. “It ’s agin rules 
nowadays, an’ I ain’t received no contrary 
orders, an’ I ain’t a-gonna let nobody in jest 
because them tamal Botches has guv in a 
mite! ’ ’ 

Garth cast his incognito to the winds and 
himself upon the gunwale. 

“Cap’n ’Bijah!” he hailed vigorously. 
‘ ‘ Oh, it’s just—us! ’ ’ 

The old man’s arm fell to his side, and his 
stare as the boat drew in beside the landing was 
only equaled by that of the man in the rubber 
boots. Jim leaped to the pier, a tall figure 
buttoned to the throat in his blue overcoat, the 
fading light winking on the gold bands across 
his shoulder-straps. He put out a quick arm 
to Garth, who disembarked with less agility. 

“Wal, by the humpkins!” shouted ’Bijah. 


114 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

<( ’Tis you! ’T is! Wal—” Speechless he 
stared at them, and Jim wondered whether 
Garth was going to laugh or cry, his expression 
was so extremely queer. 

“I didn’t scurcely know ye,” ’Bijah apol¬ 
ogized, “Cap’n, in yer unyform—an’ Ga’th, 
you an’ yer biled shirt, an’—an’—” The old 
man stopped, puzzled for a moment. “ Seems 
to me thar’s more ’n that’s changed ye.” 

Garth strode three magnificent paces toward 
’Bijah, holding himself commendably straight 
—so straight, in fact, that he nearly lost his 
balance. The Cap ’n seized both his hands and 
shook them vigorously. 

“Gorry!” he roared, “Gorry! TJiet 9 s it! 
Oh, Ga ’th—oh, Ga ’th! ” 

‘‘But I’m not an A.B. even yet,” said Garth. 

“Oh, pshaw,” growled ’Bijah, still holding 
his hands; “pshaw, don’t ye say that.” 

And Sam of the rubber boots hastily started 
his engine and backed away from the landing, 
appalled by the sight of ’Bijah Dawson—his 
eyes glittering with tears—-being clapped re¬ 
peatedly on the shoulder by a tall naval officer, 
and embraced by an enthusiastic small boy 
who laughed and wept simultaneously. 

’Bijah’s sticks of furniture changed the look 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 115 

of the living-room. He had boarded up the 
fire-place and set up an air-tight stove for the 
winter. There were no curtains at the win¬ 
dows nor at the steep stairway. ’Bijah took 
the bag and put it upon the table. 

“Set ye down an’ make yerselves homy,” he 
urged excitedly. “I gotta go an’ light up; I 
won’t be no longer ’n I hev to. But, my livin’ 
senses! You ’ll want to come up, too. Ain’t I 
the pore idjit, now!” 

“We should like to,” Jim said. 

“We must,” Garth murmured. 

There were not so many oilskins in the serv¬ 
ice-room passage, now; only ’Bijah’s stiff old 
Cape Anns swinging from one of the hooks. 
The oars of the dory leaned in the corner, just 
as they always had. ’Bijah set a foot upon the 
first step of the tower stair and then withdrew 
it. 

“Come to think on’t,” he said, “what’s the 
uset? You an’ him knows her better ’n I do. 
Go ahead up thar, Cap ’n—an ’ light up! ” 

And he feigned a sudden violent desire to 
polish an already glistening five-gallon oil-can. 

Where the spiral staircase completed its 
second turn, Garth stopped and leaned against 
the wall. 


116 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

‘‘ Go on, Fogger, ’ ’ he said. ‘ ‘ I don’t think I 
can .’ 1 

“Is it likely I’d go on?” Jim asked, as he 
lifted Garth into his arms. 

“I thought perhaps I could, now. Fogger— 
you ought n’t to; I’m too big.” 

“Not yet,” Jim said. “You may have got 
into a tight place with that sailor-suit this 
morning, but you ’re not too big for me yet— 
not for all your tweed and fine linen and your 
high-water mark on the door-post, my Pern.” 

The curtains in the lantern were closed. 
Jim drew them back and took the covers from 
the lamp. The facets of the big lens winked 
out like so many dew-drops at dawn. Jim 
hovered about touching now one thing, now 
another, establishing again his relations with 
his old command, assuring himself that every¬ 
thing was as it should be. He lighted the lamp, 
finally, and it responded with its wide, gathered 
beam, hardly visible yet on the gray sea-sur¬ 
face where dusk had not fallen. 

Garth leaned at the rail of the gallery, and 
Jim joined him there. Silently their eyes 
swept the remembered spaces, resting upon 
Trasket Rock, dark and gaunt and very lonely; 
upon Bird Rock, where squadrons of gulls were 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 117 

assembling for the night; upon the roughened, 
ratcheting water where the current pulled past 
Breakneck into the Rip. Very far off, the last 
finger of sunset lay on Hy Brasail, making it 
look indeed like an isle of the blest—a rosy, 
flying island hovering gold above a great som¬ 
ber sea. When that last sun-gleam left it, it 
vanished as completely as any magic land, sink¬ 
ing into the low mist of the up-shore horizon. 
Far outside a scud of smoke whipped out at in¬ 
tervals and was lost in the trailing gray of the 
wind-clouds. Garth shivered suddenly. 

“Cold?” Jim inquired, in a studiously off¬ 
hand tone. 

Garth shook his head. There was a very 
slight reproach in the action. The quick winter 
night had dropped, and Silver Shoal took up its 
work seriously, cleaving the seaward gloom 
with a radiant shaft. Lights swung down past 
the point—slipping red and green—and the 
rhythmic stamp and swish of an unseen boat 
rose out of the darkness. 

“I could just stay here, and stay here, and 
die, ’ y Garth said at last. 

Jim shook himself straight and turned away 
from the railing. 

“You will die,” he said, “of pneumonia, if 


118 GARTH, ABJjE SEAMAN 

you stay up here much longer. The four winds 
are tuning up, and we 11 have a merry concert 
to-night. All the arpeggios of the east fleeing 
up and down the high seas.” 

“That ’s nice, sort of,—arpeggios of the 
east, ’ ’ Garth reflected as they went down. 4 4 If 
a person could only play things like that on a 
violin! ’ ’ 

’Bijah had spread an assortment of his usual 
“vittles” on the table, and Caleb—longer of 
jaw and milder of eye than ever—was dishing 
up any quantity of potatoes in the kitchen. As 
Caleb never was known to speak for himself, 
’Bijah spoke for him when they sat down. 

4 4 He’s my shore ’nough assistant now. 
He 11 be keeper yet, ef he lives long liough. 
Won! ye, hey, ye elonguated oV sea-hoss?” 

Caleb assented by a placid monosyllable, and 
let his fascinated eyes stray from Jim to Garth, 
on whom he bestowed several hearty nods and 
winks of approval. The Cap’n alternated be¬ 
tween periods of joyous garrulity and lapses of 
silence, when he strove to make up for time lost 
by appallingly vigorous attacks on the potatoes 
and salt fish. 

44 But now then,” he said, when they were 


SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 119 


all gathered up to the stove, later, 44 ain’t 
nawthin’ to hender, an’ I want fer ye to tell us 
all the news.’ 9 

The news amounted to a good deal, for it in¬ 
cluded much recounting of experiences in the 
dangerous waters; and Caleb’s knee must have 
become quite battered from the number of 
thumps and slaps he felt compelled to give it 
as Jim’s tales progressed. A bit of informa¬ 
tion let fall by the way was the fact that Garth 
now played with some small skill upon the 
violin. Up jumped ’Bijah like one inspired. 

“Wal now, who’d ’a’ thunk that!” he ex¬ 
claimed. 4 4 They’s no end to yer surprises, 
seems so. But I know what ye kin do fer us, 
then, Ga ’th. Look ’ee here what I got; mebbe 
that’s a surprise fer you!” 

The Cap’n had crossed the room and was 
tugging at the clasps of a battered old case in 
the corner. 

“Never knowed I had a fiddle, did ye? Wal, 
I used to fiddle it some when I was a young 
feller an’ we’d get gammin’ on a whaler. 
Reckon I couldn’t make no noise now that’d 
sound handsomer ’n a shoat under a palin’ 
fence.” 

He thrust the violin toward Garth, an old 


120 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

fiddle as black as a coal and a bow warped 
awry. 

“You play,” Garth said, with a little depre¬ 
catory gesture, and a sudden disarming smile. 
‘‘Please!” he begged, as the Cap’n wavered. 

The old man shot a tentative look at Caleb, 
immovable, and Jim, encouraging; plucked the 
strings feebly; then, tuning up, flung himself 
into a chair, cocked one foot on the stove-guard, 
and began desperately to play. His big, stiff 
fingers stumbled at first, and the old unrosined 
bow scraped and slipped wildly; but presently 
both Cap’n and fiddle began to warm, and 
“Molly Boon” flew with tolerable speed and 
certainty from the frayed strings. Quite 
carried away by his own performance and 
stirred with rushing memories of many a dog¬ 
watch, ’Bijah dropped into one old tune after 
another, while the soles of Caleb’s large boots 
kept time on the floor to the fiddle’s jigging 
squeak. 

“By Jawge,” the Cap’n cried all at once, the 
bow arrested, “I clean forgot you was the one 
to play! I got me so fur back yonder I went 
clear off my course! Here now! ’ ’ 

The fiddle changed hands, Garth disclaiming 
any ability to sound much better than the afore- 


-- 



“That ain’t fiddlin’—that’s violinin’ ” 
























SILVER SHOAL SUMMONS 121 

mentioned shoat, after such a performance as 
the Cap’n’s. 

“I couldn’t play this summer, because I was 
in hospital,” he explained, “and I don’t know 
much about it, anyway.” 

“Oh, pshaw!” said ’Bijah, ramming his pipe 
with a seasoned finger. “7 ain’t played—not 
so’s to mention it—fer forty year, an’ I never 
knowed nawthin’ about it to start with!” 

So Garth st-ood up beside the boarded fire¬ 
place and lifted the warped bow. His eyes 
sought for a moment the blank window-pane, 
beyond which a faint sound of wind and water 
was audible; then his forehead knit slightly, 
and he began to play. Grieg’s “Sailor’s 
Song” is—as far as notes go—a very simple 
thing, and it was well within his reach tech¬ 
nically. But it was not a season’s schooling in 
music that had put the wild and windy quality 
into this that he was playing. Four years at 
Silver Shoal Light had added what metronome 
and music-master could not give. The luster¬ 
less strings twanged metallic, the bow squeaked 
direfully, but something in the minor sim¬ 
plicity of the notes spoke of things far bigger 
than the instrument that voiced them. The 
last plaintive cadence fell into a silent room; 


122 GABTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Calebs boot-soles were motionless, ’Bijah’s 
pipe had gone out. 

1 ‘That ain’t fiddlin’,’’ be sighed ruefully; 
“that’s violinin’.” 

Garth laid the fiddle across ’Bijah’s knees, 
and Jim consulted a watch. 

“Goodness save us!” he cried. “Three 
bells in the first night watch! This is no sort 
of time for you to be around. Eeport to the 
bridge at once, sir, and then turn in. ’ ’ 


CHAPTER XII 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHORAGE 

’VE put ye in the front room,” ’Bijah 

A said, turning a lamp-illumined face upon 
them from the stair-head. “Bed ’s a wide ’un, 
an’ Caleb an’ me ’ll bunk elsewhar.” 

When he had gone, with a crushing hand-grip 
apiece, Jim and Garth took up the lamp and 
prowled about for a little time. They stood 
longest in Garth’s old room, Jim holding the 
light high as their eyes swept from wall to wall. 
There were the big eye-bolts where Joan had 
been bound by the spy “—and the nail where 
the picture of my ship hung; and the schooner- 
model was on that shelf—” Nothing was to 
be seen from the window now; nothing but en¬ 
circling blackness, out of which came the sound 
that held their hearts silent for a moment,—the 
melancholy boom and hiss of water-voices at 
the tower-foot. 

But they laughed a great deal as they were 
undressing in the big room that had been Jim’s 
and Elspeth’s. 


123 


124 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Do you remember the time you fished out of 
your window and actually hooked a chogset, and 
when you hauled him in over the window-sill he 
slithered all over the bed and flipped off into the 
waste-paper basket ?” 

Thus Jim, rummaging the bag. 

“I should say I did! Mudder didn’t like 
it.” 

“Do you blame her, with the trail of the 
chogset all over her babe’s pillow?” 

“I was n’t a babe. I was big enough to have 
fish-hooks. ’ ’ 

“That’s figurative, my dear; merely fig-u- 
ra-tive. You were a babe, though, when you 
used to think that the sea-serpent might con¬ 
ceivably pay us a visit. Creepy-crawly up the 
stairs, creepy-crawly—” 

“Ugh!” said Garth. “You make me creepv- 
crawly! I did think he might. It was some 
nasty story you told Mudder about a squid or 
something.” 

“I never tell nasty stories,” Jim said with 
some asperity. “Only nice ones about nice 
things—like the old ones we told on the land¬ 
ing. ’ ’ 

A pajamaed figure sprang upon him forth¬ 
with. 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHOBAGE 125 

‘‘ Tell one now! When we ’re in bed! This is 
special; oh, it wouldn’t be all the same, if you 
did n’t! ” 

“But, my good lad, ’tis nigh ten o’clock,” 
Jim objected. “Even special; come now, 
really! ’ ’ 

But when he had blown out the oil-lamp and 
slid under the rough seaman’s blankets beside 
his son, Garth won him over with subtle ca¬ 
jolery. 

“Very well, then,” Jim capitulated, “two 
minutes ’ worth. So! 

“There was once a brig, and she had tasted 
the dawn on every sea and drunk of the moon¬ 
light on deep waters, till her sails were webbed 
and thin-drawn and her old bows were as gray 
with salt and sea-drift as a winter fog. So old 
she was, so old, that no man dared venture her 
to another cruise, and they towed her up-har¬ 
bor and left her warped in to a rotting pier for 
the breaker and his men to have their way with. 
But one night, when the moon scudded high and 
the blown cloud followed, the deep-sea wind 
called her, and she lifted to it proudly and lis¬ 
tened. And she knew that she could never die 
content but on the sea’s heart, and thither she 
must go. The deep-sea wind tilled her slack 


126 GAKTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

canvas and gave her strength to part her cables. 
Then the soul of her rose and stood at the helm, 
and she dropped down the harbor month and 
stood off on a phantom tack for the midmost 
waters. Slowly she woke. The binnacle-lamp 
glowed with phosphor, and port and starboard 
her running-lights came out like two jewels. 
No voice there was aboard her—nothing but the 
little clapping sound of the reef-points and the 
swing of the sea away from her foot. For 
there was no man upon her—naught but the 
soul of her that stood white at the wheel, hold¬ 
ing her to her course. And where the mid¬ 
most waters leap together, there she drove on 
under the moon, waiting her master’s pleasure. 
Out of the midmost w T aters gathered a great 
wave, a great mighty wave, crested with phos¬ 
phor and green as jade. Straight to her fore¬ 
royal it mounted, and she rose to meet it with a 
thrill. For a moment there was naught but the 
wail of the rigging and the shout of the sails, 
but above it came the great glad cry of the soul 
of her, as she went to the Good Ships’ Anchor¬ 
age, under the deep waters.” 

A small sigh came from beside Jim, and he 
said: 

“Good night, best of shipmates.” 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHORAGE 127 


There was no answer, but, after so long a 
time of silence that Jim thought him asleep, 
Garth said: 

“Fogger ,—do you think it was the Ailourosf 
That we saw?” 

Jim lay undecided for a long moment. The 
tone told him beyond doubt that Garth had seen 
the unlovely state of the boat. An inflection 
held an opening, invited a negative answer. 
For an instant he longed, cowardly, to feign 
sleep. Then he hedged drowsily: 

‘‘That wasn’t the man I sold her to.” 

“ Was n’t it?” Garth’s hand sought Jim’s 
beneath the blanket, and found it. His voice 
spoke very softly, for his father’s ear. 4 ‘I 
wish, Fogger, that the Ailouros could go to the 
Good Ships’ Anchorage—all by herself, like 
the brig.” 

*‘When her day is over,” Jim said gravely, 
in the darkness, “she will go. She may not sail 
out alone to the midmost waters, like the brig, 
but the good clean little soul of her will find the 
Great White Anchorage somehow. Because 
all that makes a boat what she is, good or bad, 
must live somewhere when she’s gone; and the 
Ailouros will find her anchorage in the hearts 
of us two, that loved her.” 



128 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Another sigh in the dark, and Garth was 
asleep with his cheek to Jim’s and his hand 
growing less tight in the other’s. 

“A year is not after all so very much,” Jim 
whispered to the shadowy ceiling. “But an¬ 
other year—what will that do to him? Or will 
any of the years change him, fundamentally, 
from the very small person who, even when he 
lay among pillows on the landing, used to blow 
rapt and solemn kisses to the sails on the hori¬ 
zon?” 

It was long before Jim fell asleep. He lay 
straight and wide-awake under the roof that 
was no longer his, listening to Garth’s sweetly 
steady breathing beside him, and to the less 
regular crawling of the tide into the rock-fis¬ 
sures below. He lay so long that he heard the 
kitchen clock strike two. It was the only other 
waking thing, except Silver Shoal Light itself, 
doing its work above with tireless and solitary 
vigilance. 

Garth could n’t altogether believe it when he 
woke the next morning: Fogger there beside 
him, and a sound of water thrashing below the 
window. Fogger was asleep. Garth sat up 
cautiously and looked out. Yes, instead of 


THE GOOD SHIPS ’ ANCHOBAGE 129 

housetops there was a heaving, slate-gray sea 
out there, with spray dashing over the landing 
and freezing to salt ice as it fell. The head¬ 
land behind which Quimpaug lay was just 
catching the first pale reflection of sunrise. 
Garth slid noiselessly out of bed and stole into 
his own old room. Cap’n ’Bijah was asleep 
there, snoring splendidly. But beyond the 
window the sun was rising, a cold, pale, winter 
sun, shouldering through masses of straight 
purple cloud above the horizon. The sea was 
dark and immense, stretching straight away to 
Spain beyond the sunrise. The storm-window 
rattled sharply as a sudden gust swept against 
it, and a spatter of spray dimmed the glass, al¬ 
though the window was twenty feet above the 
sea. Terrible and beautiful—Silver Shoal in 
winter. Garth stood shivering with combined 
rapture and cold, and crept at last, half frozen, 
back to his father’s warm nest of blankets. As 
he curled up there, Jim spoke dreamily with 
eyes still closed: 

“—and when a cheerless dawn broke, he 
found that he was alone in the icy waste, with 
the brigantine gone save for a floating timber 
here and there, and he with his arm hooked over 
an iceberg. A cold—cold—iceberg.” Here 



130 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

he opened one eye. “Eh, it’s you! What 
have you been a-doing of, mate, that I should 
take you for an iceberg V 7 

“You didn’t really, Fogger,” said Garth, 
who never, even yet, could tell when his father 
was in earnest. “I was in my room, looking at 
things. ’ 7 

“Foolish procedure,” muttered Jim. “Un¬ 
commonly foolish. I, for one, am going to 
finish the rest of my watch below in my bunk. ’ ’ 

So Garth went to sleep again, after all, and 
knew nothing more till ’Bijah sang out tremen¬ 
dously from below, and a pervasive aroma of 
coffee and salt pork and johnny-cakes was 
abroad. 

There is not much one can do out of doors in 
a sea-bound lighthouse in January. But it was 
enough of joy to sit in the tight little white- 
walled living-room, listening to the boom of 
wind without and watching the solid gray roll¬ 
ers shatter into cold foam at the end of the 
rock. St. Hubert’s and the Brooklyn Navy- 
Yard were centuries away. Garth would have 
chosen to forget them forever. It was Fog¬ 
ger who relentlessly consulted the time-table. 
But wind and waves, it seemed, could combine 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHORAGE 131 


to make the time-table a useless bit of paper 
and the train an inaccessible toy. 

“Dassn’t to take ye in,” stated ’Bijah, who 
came back from the landing with his oilskins 
crackling and his moustache frozen. “The 
Lydia she’d ship ’em by the gallyon, not to 
speak o’ yer bein’ friz.” 

Jim, who had known Silver Shoal for a num¬ 
ber of winters, agreed, staring at the storm 
with a singularly cheerful expression for a de¬ 
layed traveler. 

“Then there’s nothing for it,” he said with 
a grin, “but to settle down and make the best 
of it.” 

The day grew to a tumult of wind and water 
noises; doors shook and foam slatted sharply 
against windows. Caleb carried in arm¬ 
fuls of wood for the air-tight stove, and, with 
toes at a comfortably cozy distance from it, the 
four sat and yarned away the hours. Garth 
was engaged in whittling a boat—a delightful 
and rather messy occupation, not much in¬ 
dulged in at the studio. 

‘ ‘ Still at it, hey ! ’ ’ ’Bij ah commented. ‘ ‘ City 
ain’t hendered yer likin’s fer the sea none! 
Ner it ain’t spiled yer eye fer a good line, 



132 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

nuther, I reckon,’’ lie added, gazing with ap¬ 
proval at the little schooner-hull growing under 
Garth’s knife. 

The old man shifted his feet on the stove- 
guard and chuckled. 

“Kind o’ funny—jest us four men- 
folks. Don’t seem nateral to you, I guess, 
Cap ’n?” 

Jim, indeed, found Silver Shoal the same and 
not the same. Nor could it ever again be the 
same. His wistful memory clothed it once 
more with the aspect of those four happiest of 
years when they had fled from civilization, he 
to rest and write, Garth to win back to health, 
all of them to find joy and peace. He saw 
again the books, the fire, the settle at the hearth, 
the lamplight on bright brass and blue curtains, 
Elspeth in the doorway with gladness in her 
eyes, a five-year-old Garth gazing soberly be¬ 
yond the black pane. Jim laughed, now, a 
little, and knocked out his pipe slowly. 

“Us four men-folks,” he said meditatively. 
“Do you hear that, over there, you elderly 
maker of chips?” 

Then he went and looked out at the storm, 
which was breaking a little, and at his son, who 
had n’t heard the remark at all because he was 

y 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHORAGE 133 


pondering a matter of proportion, and then he 
said, 11 Heigh-ho! ’’ and refilled the pipe. 

New York, when they returned to it, swal¬ 
lowed the memory of the visit and made it all 
seem a briefly enacted dream. Yet the dream 
lingered; tingling spray and storm-sound in 
the square gray confines of Silver Shoal Light 
stayed with them. 

“But it wants us,” Garth confided to his 
mother in the darkness of his room at bed¬ 
time, “just the way we want it. Cap hi ’Bijah 
keeps all the oil-cans polished—even brighter 
than Fogger did, I do think—but he doesn’t 
know about things. Other things —you 
know—” 

Elspeth knew. No mermaids played in the 
moonlight on the shoal for Cap’n ’Bijah, she 
feared. There was no magic in an air-tight 
stove as there had been in driftwood flames that 
curled green and purple up the chimney. He 
tended the Light and he was proud of it, but 
had it ever spoken to him with its calm, radiant 
voice ? 

The sun goes down to other seas, the moon is on the 
wane, 



134 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

The timid stars are all blown out and curtained by 
the rain, 

But like an opening flower I spread the petals of my 
light 

To daunt the sea and set you fair upon your course 
to-night. . . . 

Jim’s lines slipped through Elspeth’s mind. 
“Are you glad or sorry you went?” she 
asked. 

“Glad, I think—yes, I ’m sure I am,” Garth 
said. “And, anyway, it ’ll know we haven’t 
forgotten it. It does know—doesn’t it, Mud- 
der?” 

“Surely it does, dearest,” she answered him, 
with his eyes entreating her in the dusk. 

Celia Hampton was really eager to hear all 
the details of the Silver Shoal trip. When 
Garth found that she was in earnest, he became 
eloquent and gave her full measure. But Ce¬ 
lia was more and more in earnest, of late. 
What she said now she meant. She launched 
questions and returned answers straight from 
an open mind, instead of drawing casually upon 
a mixed fund of perfunctory interests. In 
other words, her mental wall had become so 
low that it was no longer necessary to storm 


THE GOOD SHIPS ’ ANCHORAGE 135 

and scale it; it could be crossed at a step. 
This was the more to her credit, because she 
was quite as anxious about Loomis as before. 
Perhaps the difference was that her pity was 
now all for him instead of for herself. At all 
events, other people found that they could love 
her as well as sympathize with her now; 
and her fragile beauty had grown with her 
spirit. 

Elspeth stood quietly beside her husband at 
the door, to watch and smile. Celia sat on the 
hearth-stool, hands tucked about knees and un¬ 
feigned interest shining gaily from her up¬ 
turned face. The fire spun a nimbus of cop¬ 
per about her fair, wavy hair. Garth, one foot 
stoutly on the fender, stood above her, retail¬ 
ing some point for her delectation. 

* i Then Cap’n ’Bijah played the violin for 
us,” he was saying, “and that was a surprise. 
He said it wouldn’t sound any better than a 
pig under a gate, but it was nice, really, and—” 

* ‘ Handsomer!” said Jim suddenly, entering. 
“Handsomer ’n a shoat under a palin’ fence. 
A pig under a gate, indeed! Pern, you misrep¬ 
resent the Cap’n’s style of simile.” 

Celia looked up, laughing, as Elspeth came 
toward them. 


136 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“This has just come in the mail,” Elspeth 
said, “and will interest you both.” 

She extended to Garth a gray envelope, ad¬ 
dressed to him in the black, vigorous writing 
of John Loomis. Garth sat himself down on 
the other side of the hearth and opened the 
letter in a businesslike manner with his knife, 
which was attached to the silver chain Loomis 
had given him. 

“He ’s in Trinidad,” Garth announced, puz¬ 
zling over the scribbled lines. “Wait a min¬ 
ute ; it’s all mixed up. 

“ ‘I shall probably drift back coastwise to Rio very 
shortly, and perhaps really north from there if I can 
get a ship. Glad you like the chain. I’ve been 
having fun with new stars—the Net and the Sword¬ 
fish and of course the Southern Cross itself, all 
tangled up in the Milky Way. My ships aren’t 
your kind, being rusty freighters mostly, but the 
stars are just as good as anybody’s. Why do you 
always write to me about Miss Hampton? Did she 
get over her sunstroke?’ ” 

He had read it before he could stop. 

“What sunstroke?” Celia cried. “Garth, 
you never told him I had a sunstroke!” 

“No,” Garth said, “I didn’t. You hadn’t. 


THE GOOD SHIPS’ ANCHORAGE 137 

You told me to write about you, or Mother did; 
you know, on my birthday that time. So I did, 
but 1 ’m afraid it didn’t do any good.” 

‘‘The ‘sunstroke’ evidently refers to that 
fearsome hot day of your meeting last sum¬ 
mer,” Elspeth suggested. 

“Is that how it impressed him?” Celia mur¬ 
mured. “Is there more, Garth?” 

“No,” said Garth, folding the letter and 
putting it in his inside pocket. 

The rest of the letter had said: 


Don’t write about her—I think she bothered me. 
What about your sea-legs? 


J. L. 


No one blamed Celia for being quiet at tea- 
time and leaving soon after. Elspeth was 
sorry she must go, sorry to think of that fur¬ 
nished room down town with only anxiety and 
reproach and fading hope to share it. But the 
hospitality of the studio was not Elspeth’s to 
give, and she could only kiss Celia at the door, 
and whisper: 

“Let’s pretend!” 


CHAPTEE XIII 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 

T HE city has a way of devouring monthfuls 
of time; that is one thing that can be said 
for it. St. Huberts, of course, left only mar¬ 
gins of days, and quite suddenly it was late 
April, and Easter vacation. Garth took a very 
casual leave of his school, not knowing, of 
course, that he was never going back to it. 
What happened was that Jim was ordered to 
Newport, which was why he’d been saying, 
“Ah!” so mysteriously. Not that Garth knew 
what there was to say “ah” about. He mar¬ 
shaled all the facts he knew about Newport and 
passed them in review before him. It had once 
been the capital of Ehode Island—that one was 
told in the history books; it was on the shore of 
Narragansett Bay—the geography book showed 
that; it was supposedly inhabited wholly by 
very grand folk who lived in palaces of marble. 
Oh, yes, and there was an old mill which might 
or might not have been built by vikings. That 

138 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 139 

interested Garth more than the palaces. Since 
Fogger was ordered to the Torpedo Station, it 
argued the presence of sea—or at least bay— 
somewhere near. The map confirmed that, 
and Garth kindled. Even if he had to live in 
one of those marble palaces of which, somehow, 
he fancied the whole town must be built, he 
thought there must at least be glimpses of the 
water, 

Jim went ahead to find a house. Apparently 
he found one, for trunks presently squatted in 
corners of the apartment, and Elspeth bent fe¬ 
verishly over them with armfuls of things. 

4 ‘There ’s no use asking me what it’s like,” 
she told Garth again and again, “because I do 
not know. Fogger manages to write every¬ 
thing I want to hear about cupboards and clos¬ 
ets and such, without giving me an idea of 
what the place is like. He says it ’s furnished, 
and that we ’ll both like it, and that we ’re in 
luck. ’ ’ 

“Is it on a street, Mudder, like this?” Garth 
asked. 

“Not like this/' Elspeth said, gazing down 
into the canyon of the avenue, “But I don’t 
know what sort of street it is on. Fogger says, 

< a pleasant outlook.’ That might mean almost 


140 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

anything, from a maple-tree in one’s front yard 
to a park opposite, or—” 

“Or the sea,” Garth murmured. 

“I’m afraid we ’re not in quite such luck as 
that,” his mother said. “And I can’t imagine 
Fogger’s describing the sea as a ‘ pleasant out¬ 
look,’ anyway. Must you really take all those 
models, dearest?” she added plaintively, indi¬ 
cating an arm-load of whittled hulls, all very 
much alike, which he had dumped down before 
her. 

“Well, this one I must,” he explained, turn¬ 
ing them over , 1 i and this one’s really different, 
though it does look just the same; and this is 
the best of all; and this—” 

“Oh, they ’re not a bad shape to poke into 
comers,” his mother capitulated. “I see they 
must all go, of course.” 

The Sinclairs saw Garth and his mother off. 
Jim was waiting in Newport, with the house 
open and more or less in running order. Celia 
wanted to come down to the pier, too. With 
Elspeth’s going she felt that she was losing 
all that stood between her and desperation. 
She was afraid that the specters in the fur¬ 
nished room might be too much for her, but 


/ 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 141 

she determined to fight them with everything 
that Elspeth had given her of courage and phi* 
losophy. 

“Only think, I never have slept on board a 
boat yet!" Garth cried, trying to get a first 
glimpse of the Sound steamer. 

That was true; for all of his sea-fever, he 
never had. That the trip was to be by water, 
and at night, filled him with huge satisfaction. 
The steamer lay at her pier in the North River, 
only a square white bit of her side visible 
through the opening in the wharf-house. There 
all was dim and filled with bustle. Horses’ 
hoofs thudded; electric baggage-trucks skimmed 
about. 

‘ ‘ How big is she when you can see all of her ? 
Do you know how many knots she can make, 
Mudderf Oh, look at the size of her paddle- 
wheel! Could she go across the Atlantic if 
she wanted to 1 ” 

Jim being absent, no one in the party could 
answer these rapid-fire queries. It was good- 
by, then, to the Sinclairs, and over the gang¬ 
plank. The stairs to the saloon were brass on 
the edges and rubber in the middle, quite dif¬ 
ferent from any stairs Garth knew. They led 
to the bright, red-carpeted main saloon, where 



142 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

the orchestra was tuning up on the gallery. 
The stateroom was beyond, on a little passage 
from the end of which a glimpse of sky and a 
puff of river-smell came through. The big 
brass key turned in the lock—hollow, cavernous, 
a promise of adventure behind that white pan¬ 
eled door. 

4 4 Real bunks, Mudder! ’ 9 Garth was raptur¬ 
ous. 44 May I sleep in the top one? Do they 
just give you this soap? Oh, wouldn’t it 
be fun if we were going around the world on 
her! ’ ’ 

Elspeth thought she might prefer larger 
quarters for a trip around the world. She 
stowed a bag under the lower berth, and they 
sallied out again. They climbed up many steep 
iron steps to the hurricane-deck, and walked 
toward where the bow of the boat cut across 
the hazy sunset. 

44 You can see into the pilot-house,” Garth 
stated, hovering beside an open door. 4 4 Did you 
ever see such a big wheel! Do they mind if 
you stand here on the step ? ’ ’ 

4 4 They ’ ’ apparently did not mind. Presently 
a young quartermaster emerged and beat vio¬ 
lently upon a great bell; the captain stationed 
himself at his window and laid his hand upon 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 143 


the engine-room signal. Then the boat, with 
one prolonged bellow of “I’m co-o-o-o-o-ming ! 99 
from her deep whistle, began moving out 
from the pier. The big steamer picked her way 
majestically down the crowded river, from time 
to time raising her mighty voice in a sonorous 
blast. She swung around the Battery and 
swept into the East River; the gray curves of 
the Brooklyn Bridge loomed nearer. 

4 ‘She ’ll never get under there!” gasped 
Garth, with fascinated eyes on the flagpole and 
smoke-stack of the steamer, which seemed to 
rise far above the girders of the bridge. “Can 
she, Mudder? Oh, it will break!” 

But the towering stack seemed to dwindle as 
she approached; the bridge shot up higher and 
higher above; the illusion vanished and she 
sailed under at the very last instant, unhurt, 
seemingly a little proud of her own cleverness 
in telescoping herself. But Garth drew a long 
breath of relief, and watched her progress to¬ 
ward the next gray span with fascinated in¬ 
terest. It was violet dusk before the last bridge 
was passed. The ruddy star of the lighthouse 
at the end of Blackwell's Island slipped by; red 
and green, the lights that mark the great mid¬ 
dle span of Hell Gate gleamed ahead. 



144 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Don’t you feel any pangs of hunger?’’ Els- 
peth inquired at last. 

“I forgot about eating,” Garth confessed. 
“I forgot we could eat on board. I suppose,” 
he added with a sigh, “we’d just sit up here 
all night if we waited for it to stop being nice!” 

“I suppose we should!” his mother agreed. 

Supper, brought in silver dishes by obsequi¬ 
ous blacks, was amusing. Afterward, Garth 
was suddenly immensely sleepy. He wanted to 
stay awake to enjoy the upper berth, but that 
was not easy. Everything was dark except the 
filigree pattern of light above the door. The 
glasses in the rack above the wash-stand rat¬ 
tled slightly. The upper berth itself vibrated 
and creaked. There was a fading, swelling 
rush of water away from the paddle-wheels, 
perpetually. People walked past the windows; 
their footsteps made a quick short sound with¬ 
out reverberation. It was funny to have peo¬ 
ple walking so very near to one’s bed, yet so 
far away. Very—very—far away— 

Garth woke momentarily, much later. There 
was no sound but the noises the boat made. 
Sometimes the mattress pressed hard against 
him; sometimes he almost floated up away from 
it. His overcoat, on the door, flopped with a 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 145 

steady motion. A long creak, a lifting, the 
pause on the crest of the swell—then the set¬ 
tling swish as the boat swept down into the 
trough. She was going around Point Judith. 

Garth meant to stay awake that time, too, 
but he did n’t. The next thing that woke him 
was a quick thumping at the door, and a voice 
that cried, “Newport!” Just like that: Bang- 
bang-bang —“Newport!” But it was the mid¬ 
dle of the night! He had n’t realized the other 
end of the journey at all. At first he was too 
sleepy to know exactly what he was about. 
There was Mudder, all dressed, and helping 
him to lace his boots. Gradually he woke more 
thoroughly and began to feel a rushing sense of 
excitement. 

The knock and the voice had certainly roused 
them soon enough. Lights were still slipping 
by across black water when they stumbled down 
to the gangway. Then the engine-room bell— 
the red light on a dolphin gliding past—a lit 
wharf-head springing up just outside—men 
running with hawsers—and— 

“There’s Fogger!” shouted Garth, waving 
his arms violently on general principles, though 
there was little likelihood of Jim's seeing him 
through the window. 



146 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Oh, the wet, wet smell, and the water smack¬ 
ing under the gang-plank, and— 

44 Hello, dear people! On time!” from Jim, 
who was the only real thing in this curious, fas¬ 
cinating dream. 

In the cab, while the horse’s hoofs went clip- 
clop through unknown streets, Jim talked dis- 
jointedly, plainly as excited as any one. 

44 Blankets came,” he informed his wife. 
4 4 Everything ’s running, more or less. How’d 
you like the Sound, Pern? Elspeth, you may n’t 
care for some of my commissary arrangements, 
but of course all that will straighten out. Oh, 
you ’ll like it. Going to sleep, old man?” 

There was maddeningly little to be seen from 
the cab-window. Occasional arc-lights gave 
garish, unnatural glimpses of silhouetted trees; 
all the houses were dark. The hack stopped 
with a jolt, and bags and Pemberleys were left 
on a flagged pavement, while the vehicle 
wheeled and trundled away into the darkness. 
Jim, peering closely, fitted a still unfamiliar 
key into the lock of a black door adorned by 
a fine old brass knocker. Nothing more could 
be seen of the house but a few feet of dim white 
clapboards on either side. There seemed to be 
trees near, with a fitful breeze among them. 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 147 


“Elms,” Jim explained briefly, when his son 
asked him if there were trees. 

“I’m ’cited,” said Elspeth, in the dark hall. 

Jim turned on lights here and there, and his 
wife cried out: 

“Oh, Jim, we are indeed in luck!” 

At three in the morning it is impossible to 
get a very comprehensive idea of a place one 
has never seen before, but the travelers did 
gain one general joyous impression of low ceil¬ 
ings, and gray walls, and old-fashioned furni¬ 
ture magnanimously left by trustful owners, 
and gray homespun curtains, and brass fire- 
irons, and a colonial mantelpiece. 

“What ’s outside?” Garth demanded, going 
to the bow-window. 

“A pleasant outlook, I tell you,” Jim said. 

Just now there seemed to be nothing at all: 
blackness, and lights that looked far away; yet 
what could lie between ? 

“After my toiling in my clumsy fashion to 
prepare beds,” said Jim, “aren’t you going to 
avail yourselves of ’em?” 

“I keep forgetting the incredible hour,” 
Elspeth confessed. “Of course—this instant, 
Garth Pemberley!” 

That was queerest of all—going to bed again. 


148 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

But what a duck of a room! Little and low and 
gray blue, with a Windsor chair and an old 
clothes-press, and a half-grown four-poster 
with sprouting posts! 

How long Garth’s father and mother ex¬ 
plored and talked he did n’t know; he thought 
it rather unfair. But presently he became 
aware of a sound—a sound that drew him bolt 
upright in bed, and then sent him to sprawl 
across the window-sill, listening. It was a 
suck, a slosh, a soft wet slapping—a sound of 
water against rocks, or he was a lubber! Had 
he lived four years on Silver Shoal without 
learning every noise that water on stone can 
make? He did not know that he breathed, lis¬ 
tening. He raised his head and looked more 
closely at those lights across the darkness. One 
was quite near. It winked clear and then dim, 
clear and dim, clear—it was so very much like 
the lamp of a lighthouse that Garth scarcely 
saw how it could be anything else. ‘ ‘ A pleasant 
outlook”—this had been an extraordinary 
night, altogether. “It couldn’t possibly be 
true, ’ ’ said Garth solemnly to himself. 

As he leaned at the window, something more 
amazing happened. There was the sudden 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 149 


whoop of a whistle, the same deep whistle that 
had blown as the Sound steamer pulled out of 
her New York pier. Then a light detached it¬ 
self from the darkness and slipped out between 
Garth’s window and the far lamps—a gliding 
bow-light, then the green gleam of a starboard- 
light. There was the swash and beat of paddle- 
wheels. The Sound steamer was passing, on 
her way up the bay, passing, incredibly, just 
outside Garth’s window. He watched till the 
stern-light was a tiny floating jewel, far off, and 
then he gave up and went back to bed. He lay 
there, shivering ecstatically at intervals, and 
wondering whether he’d better go and demand 
of Fogger if all this was true. 

“No,” he decided, “it might stop the magic. 
If I shut my eyes tight perhaps the dream will 
keep on doing it . 9 ’ 

A matter-of-fact and impartial dawn con¬ 
vinced him. At first, of course, he did n’t know 
where he was. He lay with his knees humped 
up, staring at the gray ceiling, and the top of 
the clothes-press, and the window-curtain flap¬ 
ping. Then he sorted everything out a little 
more clearly, and plunged out of bed to the 
window. At the foot of a short, steep bank, 


150 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

which sloped green under two elms, was a sea¬ 
wall; and beyond the sea-wall stretched the 
whole of Newport Harbor, gray and windy. 
From the house some wooden steps led down 
the bank to a long, weathered pier. “Our 
pier!” Garth murmured in rapture. To right 
and left other piers projected from the lawns 
of other houses, and skiffs and launches bobbed 
at anchor. Opposite, across the channel, was 
the square lighthouse on the end of Goat Is¬ 
land. It was so near that Garth could see the 
keeper’s dinghy moored in an angle of the 
jetty, and the curtain blowing from a window. 

He could not wait to discover anything more. 
He fled to tell his parents that it was all true, 
and beg them to look out and see for themselves. 
But, arrived in the hallway, he found himself 
in a totally strange house, and knew not where 
to find his father and mother. So, being more 
excited than he knew, and tired still, he leaned 
against the wall and wept for joy and vexation 
both. A white door opened, and a pajamaed 
Fogger loomed up and bore him off to the se¬ 
curity and delight of a full-grown four-poster, 
and to Mudder, who was half awake and just 
beginning to understand his whispered rap¬ 
tures about the “pleasant outlook.” 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 151 


The old house sat with its door-stone pro¬ 
jecting into the flagged sidewalk of Washing¬ 
ton Street. Most of the other houses did, too; 
they were gray and white and very sedate. 
Not one of them was built of marble, as Garth 
discovered when he came out upon the step to 
survey new surroundings by the light of early 
morning. Though the front doors of the houses 
gave upon the street, they turned a shoulder 
on it and looked to the harbor over their little 
lawns. The cross-streets, as soon as they had 
circumspectly made their juncture with Wash¬ 
ington, turned themselves into steep, cob¬ 
bled streetways with boats pulled up on skids; 
then plunged straight into water that rose and 
fell over weed-grown paving. Such a street¬ 
way lay just outside the northern windows of 
the little white house that the Pemberleys now 
called their own. 

In the dining-room within the low vine-cov¬ 
ered ell the new tenants ate their first much in¬ 
terrupted breakfast—interrupted by almost 
constant gazings from the harbor windows. 

“Co-nan-i-cut,” Garth read from the side of 
a squat craft paddling into view. ‘ 4 Well, she’s 
a fat old one, is n’t she?” 

“She’s the Jimtown ferry,” his father ex- 


152 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

plained; “Jamestown, I should say. That’s 
on Conanicut Island, yonder. See the War Col¬ 
lege, Pern? That maroonish-colored dome, up 
the bay ? There’s the Constellation, at anchor; 
she fought in the War of 1812, she did.” 

“A frigate?” cried Garth, “a square-rigged 
ship ? Is she ? Did she ? Where ?’ ’ 

44 Hi! Don’t go out through the window,” 
Jim counseled. “We ’ll go and see her some 
day. ’ ’ 

And meanwhile Elspeth ran back and forth, 
laughing, trying to find napkins, and something 
better to eat eggs with than tablespoons. 

Surely it was too good to be true! Early 
spring flowers were opening on the slope that 
dropped downward to the water; young gulls 
sat creaking on the pier rail; the harbor 
gleamed gray beyond, to where Conanicut 
showed a long strip of hazy purple; still be¬ 
yond, the mainland lifted a thin line of fainter 
blue. 

Dear Joan [wrote Garth almost at once, to his 
aunt], 0, 0, it is right on the harbor!! Our own 
peir sticking out into it and a lighthouse opsit, and 
because it was such a wonderful suprise is why Fog- 
ger was so misterious! The front door is on a street 
but my window is at the back—boats going by and 


THE PLEASANT OUTLOOK 153 


everything! You must come and see it. I did like 
Uncle Rob’s studio but do you know what I mean 
after waiting so long this is sort of wonderfuller. 

Then, abandoning pen and paper, he fled 
abruptly to the “peir,” that he might have a 
closer view of a lumber-schooner coming in. 

Joan, reading the scrawl later in the New 
York apartment that seemed somehow very 
empty now, felt that the harbor house must 
be, indeed, ‘‘sort of wonderfuller.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 

I T was hard to spare Jim all day and every 
day. He usually contrived, however, to 
come home for lunch and steal time to smoke a 
pipe afterward. When the first confusion of 
unpacking was over, the days settled into a 
comfortable routine. Because of the spring 
term at St. Hubert ’s which Garth was missing, 
his mother fell into the way of reading to him 
at definite times, or sending him off to the 
bow-window with a list of sums. Being the 
wife of a naval officer, she found, involved a 
number of social duties and pleasures; while 
she called at the naval stations, Garth fished off 
the pier, or, at low tide, made 4 ‘ crab-museums ’ ’ 
below the sea-wall. 

That no boat lay at that pier, not even so 
much as a skiff, filled Garth with regret. He 
decided that a person ought n’t to expect to 
have everything, but he couldn’t help thinking 

of the Ailouros sometimes. When, one morn- 

154 


MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 155 


ing, he found a little stray boat butting her 
nose at the very steps of their own pier, be did 
wish she bad come to stay. No oars were in 
her, and her mooring-rope—with a small 
wooden buoy on it—streamed untidily beside 
her, fouled with eel-grass. Garth scrambled 
down the steps and made her fast to the pier. 
While he sat looking at her, and wondering 
whose she was, and whether he and Fogger 
might take one row in her, he heard a voice 
hailing him vigorously. 

“Good morning! I see thee*s caught my 
boat for me!” 

Garth had heard that Quakers said “thee” 
and “thou” to one, but he had never been so 
addressed, and turned about hastily to see the 
speaker. It was a middle-aged lady who was 
standing up in another rowboat off the end of 
the pier. She wore a jumper and a salty blue 
denim skirt, and she was shading her brown 
face with her hand. Garth liked her instantly. 

4 ‘ Is she yours ? ” he called. ‘ ‘ She was trying 

to climb up our steps.*’ 

The lady sat herself down on the thwart with¬ 
out more ado, and pulled stoutly for the pier. 
As the nose of her rowboat slid by the steps 
and threatened to bump the other, she leaned 


156 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

over and stretched out a tanned arm to Garth. 

“Does thee mind catching hold, young man!” 
she said briskly; “that’s it! She broke her 
moorings in the little blow last night and went 
oft visiting. I didn’t moor her myself, and 
that’s the trouble, I dare say. I’ve just ar¬ 
rived at my house for the summer, and Mr. 
Jones put off the boats and moored them with 
his usual thoroughness.” 

“Which is your house, and who is Mr. 
Jones?” Garth asked, holding the gunwale of 
the rowboat. 

“Perhaps thee’d like to row down with me 
and help moor the boats, and I ’ll show thee 
which my house is, ’ > said the lady. 44 Thee can 
walk back in one minute, by Washington 
Street.” 

That was an invitation which needed no rep¬ 
etition, and Garth was very soon in the stern 
of the rowboat, with the skiff’s painter in his 
hand. 

44 Mr. Jones is the queerest old fellow,” the 
lady explained, pushing off with a well-aimed 
thrust of her oar. 4 4 He’s supposed to put your 
boats off, and mend your pier and your sea¬ 
wall, and plant your garden, and put up your 


MISS ESTHER ROBINSON * 157 


shutters; but sometimes he does things and 
sometimes he doesn’t. Has thee lived here 
long? I don’t believe I know thy name.” 

Garth told her his name and a good deal 
more, and in exchange the lady informed him 
that she was Esther Robinson. She also told 
him that she didn’t, as a rule, say “thee” to 
every one she met in a day’s rowing, hut that 
somehow he had struck her at once as a person 
who would appreciate the Friendly speech. 

‘ ‘ I like it very much indeed, ’ ’ Garth assured 
her earnestly. “Please do.” 

By this time they had passed the intervening 
piers and slid in among the high green piles 
of the Robinson wharf. The mooring of both 
boats required much slipping and scrambling 
and splashing—it being high tide with a ground- 
swell coming in from outside—but finally Garth 
and Miss Robinson stood upon the pier looking 
down with satisfaction at the bobbing boats be¬ 
fore they turned away. Garth had seen this 
old house from the other side; it was fine early 
colonial, gray and gambreled, but from the 
street you saw only the double Dutch door with 
its knocker, and the dignified front windows. 
From the pier you could see the big, windy 



158 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

piazza with the well at its corner, and the 
quaint kitchen ell, and the flagged walk that led 
past the boat-house to the sea-wall. 

Garth couldn’t stay, because he suddenly 
thought that his mother might be wondering 
what had become of him; so he left Miss Esther 
Robinson on her windy porch. 

“I’m coming very soon to see thy father 
and mother,” she assured him, the oars over 
her shoulder; “and perhaps some evening 
thee ’ll come to see me—all of you, perhaps.” 

Miss Robinson was as good as her word. 
She came rapping a double knock at the Pem- 
berleys’ door one twilight—hatless, after the 
good informal Point fashion; dressed all in 
crisp white that made her fine face look the 
browner and her clear, kind eyes more blue. 
And she liked the Pemberleys so much that she 
urged them to visit her very soon. As for the 
Pemberleys, what well-springs did they not find 
in this new friend, of high thought and wide- 
flung sympathy. Where Garth saw only a kind 
and simple lady whose nautical tastes distinctly 
fitted with his own, his parents discovered a 
spirit devoted to many splendid causes, a 
woman whose pen was equally capable of writ- 



MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 159 


ing a thoughtful sonnet or a deeply probing ap¬ 
peal for justice to her fellow-men. As she sat 
with them, her quick brown fingers knotting 
intricately the strands of a lanyard she was 
making, the talk flashed over many a complex 
problem, and Miss Robinson unconsciously re¬ 
vealed that she was indeed an active worker 
in the world. But, with keen understanding, 
she could include Garth, too, in the conversa¬ 
tion, and paused to explain to him the knots 
she made, which he strove vainly to copy with 
an ill-assorted collection of strings. 

That first impression of her house, some 
nights later, was all shadowy and mysterious 
and wonderful. Only an oil-lamp burned in 
the square gray hall, where ancient leathern 
fire-buckets swung from an angle of the stair. 
A lamp, too, lit the big, low living-room, where 
they lingered only long enough to mark the 
great six-foot fireplace bordered with storied 
tiles, and the polished Queen Anne chairs 
ranged against dark paneling. For the piazza 
seemed to summon so peremptorily that there 
they all went to sit and face the ever-fascinating 
harbor. The last of afterglow had died behind 
Conanicut; the sputter of a distant launch made 


160 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

the only sound, except the lap of water at the 
sea-wall. The lighthouse opposite served to re¬ 
mind every one of Silver Shoal, about which 
Miss Robinson was as eager to hear as the 
Pemberleys were to tell. 

Presently, somehow, the evening demanded 
song, as places and times will, and Miss Esther 
Robinson brought out a golden guitar and to it 
sang ballads in a crooning contralto. To 
Garth’s delight and amazement she knew some 
of Jim’s sea-songs, and hummed an alto to 
them as she plucked an accompaniment for 
his swinging baritone. Then some one saw the 
high stern-light of the Sound steamer slipping 
behind Goat Island, and departure was post¬ 
poned until she should leave Newport and come 
past through the channel. She whistled as she 
left Long Wharf; first her bow-light gleamed 
out, then the whole great glittering bulk of her 
loomed past like a living band of gems. The 
still harbor was stirred by the measured thrash 
of her paddles; there was a faint swirl of music 
from on board. She made the close turn past 
the lighthouse and dwindled slowly, a golden 
diadem, beyond Rose Island. 

The guitar was put to bed; too much harbor 
air didn’t agree with it. Garth, too, must 


/ 

MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 161 

be put to bed, bis mother declared. He broke 
out with an involuntary “Oh, no!” so hasty 
and so sincere that it made every one 
laugh. 

“Though we all feel the same way,” Jim 
agreed. 

Miss Esther Robinson said they must come 
again. Looking back, they saw her smiling in 
her open door, with the orange lamplight be¬ 
hind her shining on the straight-backed hall 
chairs and the graceful turn of the gray balus¬ 
trade. 

It was not until the next time he went to see 
Miss Robinson that Garth really saw the fasci¬ 
nating old house. That time he was invited to 
tea—just Garth, by himself. Tea meant sup¬ 
per, but he arrived rather early, and long sun¬ 
light lay across the floors. From talking about 
a schooner-model in the south room, which first 
caught Garth’s eye, Miss Robinson fell to un¬ 
folding many an interesting tale. She showed 
him the most curious things: a box to hold dif¬ 
ferent sorts of tobacco, with a long horn spoon 
to stir toddy; and India china, and queer coral, 
and a great iron chest with a key a foot long 
and heavy as a cannon-ball. The things had 
been always in the house, and the house had 


162 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

belonged always to Robinsons, so it was rather 
exciting. 

“One thing,” Miss Robinson said, “isn’t 
here that ought to be—the very thing we should 
most like to have. And that’s a silver coffee- 
service that General Rochambeau sent to my 
ancestors, after the Revolution. He received 
some kindness at Friend Robinson’s hands dur¬ 
ing the time he was quartered in Newport, and 
sent it when he’d gone back to France. It was 
pretty nice of him, I think. That silver was in 
the family for two generations after that, and 
what became of it then nobody knows.” 

“What a pity!” Garth said. 

Miss Robinson agreed that it was indeed a 
pity, but Garth thought that at any rate a great 
many curious and interesting things were left. 
Why, those tiles around the fireplace would 
have claimed an hour, themselves! 

“Thee sees,” Miss Robinson said, “this used 
to be the kitchen long ago; that accounts for 
the size of the fireplace. There was a brick 
oven and a turnspit and all. These were the 
slave quarters, and, when later generations re¬ 
modeled the old house, all that was changed 
about. But here’s something that would in- 



MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 163 


terest thee, Garth, I think. Come in here a 
minute.” 

She led the way into the south room, where 
there was a jolly collection of oars and charts 
and field-glasses and books. It was a curiously 
paneled room, and in one corner of it was a sup¬ 
porting post half built into the wall. 

“Put thy ear close to that,” ordered Miss 
Robinson. “I ’ll go to the other side.” 

Garth, not knowing at all what to expect, laid 
his ear against the wood and listened. Miss 
Robinson had left the room; all was still. 
Then he heard her voice, very close to him. 

“Does thee hear me?” 

“Yes!” shouted Garth. 

“Thee doesn’t need to speak so loud,” he 
was told. 

“Don’t I?” he said. 

“Still less,” the voice commanded. 

“Where are you?” he asked, almost in a 
whisper. 

“Ah-ha!” said Miss Robinson. 

Then there was silence again. In a moment 
she rejoined him. 

“It’s a hollow whispering-post, thee sees,” 
she explained. “I was in the dining-room. 


164 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

They say that the master used to get up now 
and then in the evening and put his ear to the 
post to hear if the slaves were plotting any 
mischief. It’s rather fun, isn’t it?” 

Fun? Indeed Garth thought so. Such a 
house! 

4 ‘While I was in the dining-room I found that 
tea was ready,” Miss Robinson said; so in they 
went. 

The dining-room fronted upon the street, and 
beyond its curtained windows you could see the 
shade of elms on the flagging, and the heads of 
passing sailors, and of little running urchins 
ready to splash into the water at the end of the 
streetway. Within, the light of a student-lamp 
threw a mild glow over brown paneling, a gleam 
on the scroll-topped shell-cabinet and the tall 
grandfather’s clock that cast a gentle benedic¬ 
tion over the room from its worn golden face. 
The supper was very good, and somehow won¬ 
derfully different: milk tea, and something deli¬ 
cious in little bake-dishes that were shaped like 
fishes with curly tails. Afterward Miss Robin¬ 
son said: 

“Would thee like to take a little row, I won¬ 
der?” as if she thought his answer could be 
anything but an enthusiastic, “Oh, yes!” 


MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 


165 


“Will thee wait just a minute, while I put on 
my jumper? If thee likes, thee can carry the 
oar-locks down to the pier. I ’ll bring the oars. 
We ’ll need only one pair—unless thee’d like 
to row, too?” 

Garth would very much like to row, too. So 
he carried a pair of oars and the oar-locks down 
to the pier, stumbling over things in the dusk 
that was almost darkness. He untied the 
painter of the little rowboat, and in a minute 
Miss Robinson joined him, with the other oars 
across her shoulder. She wore her jumper, 
with its sleeves well turned up. 

At the dark, slippery steps, Garth had to 
swallow his pride. 

“Do you mind helping me on board?” he 
said. 

Somehow, now that he was so much more 
nearly an “A.B.,” it was harder for him to ask 
for help than when he had been more obviously 
in need of it. It puzzled him sometimes. Jim 
could have told him why, but he had never 
asked. Just now the combination of darkness, 
sliminess, and an oscillating boat was really too 
much for him. Miss Robinson jumped him in, 
and he scrambled to the bow thwart. She 
pushed off from the shadowy pier, and they 


166 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

settled to their oars. At his second stroke 
Garth “caught a crab” and almost went over 
backward, to his infinite disgust. A year and a 
half out of a boat was his excuse, and Miss 
Esther Eobinson seemed to think it a very good 
one. 

They pulled out among the anchored launches 
and cat-boats that tilted and creaked drowsily 
oft the piers, and rowed on toward the outer 
harbor. The little boat lifted to the light swell 
like a buoy, and smacked her way merrily 
enough. They passed close under the light¬ 
house, and lay beside the path of the Conanicut 
in order to catch the waves of her wake, which 
bobbed the rowboat about in fine fashion. 

“Thee likes every bit of this sort of thing, 
doesn’t thee,” Miss Eobinson said, breaking 
a silence that had lasted all the way out. 

Then she spied a floating board, and there be¬ 
gan a fascinating search for more driftwood to 
feed the great Eobinson fireplace. It involved 
many cries of “Port!” and “Starboard a lit¬ 
tle!” the bumping of the boat against drifting 
timbers, and the hauling in of the prize drip¬ 
ping over the gunwale to thump down on the 
growing pile in the bow. (Later Garth was to 
enjoy the result of this chase—on some cool 


MISS ESTHER ROBINSON 167 

evening when the Pemberleys sat about Esther 
Robinson’s hearth; no light in the low room but 
the ripple of the vivid salt flames, no sound but 
the mellow plucking of the guitar and the purr 
of the burning driftwood.) 

Garth and Miss Robinson rowed in very laz¬ 
ily, and she sang about three jolly sailor-boys 
who were newly come from South Amerikee, 
and a sad little song about cockle-shells. It 
was altogether dark before they pulled in past 
the harbor-light. Lamps ashore were waking; 
a new moon curved above the water. 

“I ’ll put thee off at thy own pier,” Miss 
Robinson said. 6 ‘Pull thy port oar, child, 
quick!” 

It is very hard to make a properly formal 
farewell in a rocking boat that is being held 
against a slippery step by one’s hostess. It 
is not even easy to shake hands. Garth, how¬ 
ever, managed to clutch his friend’s left hand 
with his right. 

“Good night,” he said—and then, “Oh, Miss 
Esther Robinson, I do think thee is the nicest 
person!” 

The whole remark, including the “thee,” was 
entirely involuntary and came like a gust of 
wind. 


168 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Well,” she said, “just thee turn that right 
around, substituting Garth Pemberley for 
Esther Robinson!” 

And he heard the splash of her oars in the 
dark as she pulled out from the pier. The 
lights of his own bow-window shone in a patch 
of gold across the night behind him. He was 
all alone there on the pier. For just a minute 
more he wanted to be all alone. He held on 
to the splintery rail of the pier and looked into 
the dark wetness, from which came little 
splashy noises. 

4 4 Oh, I y m awf ’ly, awf ’ly happy, I think ! 19 
said Garth, to Newport Harbor in general. 

Then there was the creak of a board, and 
Fogger’s voice called: 

44 Ahoy! Did I hear a boat at this landing ? 17 

44 Me, sir,” said Garth. 

Jim came to the end of the pier, and they 
stood together. 

4 4 Do you know, I was thinking of some rimes 
before you came in,” he said, 44 about the Sound 
steamer going by.” 

4 4 Go on , 9 9 said Garth. 

Jim threw away his cigarette. It curved 
downward in a little fiery arc and struck the 
water with a tiny hiss. Then he said: 


MISS ESTHER EOBINSON 169 

“A moving shape of light she comes, 

Casting the harbor in a dream; 

Slumbrous and soft her engine drums, 

We see the ghostly foam-wake gleam. 

“So brief a moment, while the air 
Is shaken with a cry of light 
That clothes her, radiantly fair; 

Her bow-wash whisper thrills the night. 

“Her twinkling gold reflections slip 
Among the piles of gaunt gray piers, 

The vision of a fairy ship 
Invoked from tales of magic years. 

“A moment when her mighty stern 
Half spans the fairway like a crown; 

Tier upon tier her star-lights burn; 

A snatch of music flutters down. 

“Lo! Where she was the night is dark; 

The harbor wakens from its spell; 

But still about the sea-wall—hark! 

Runs the last murmur of her swell.” 

They stood there looking at the far clustered 
lights, and Jim’s arm was about his son. The 
water whispered and clucked at the anchored 
boats, and the pier, and the wall. Fogger’s 
arm was very close and strong. Suddenly 
Garth felt happier than ever. 


CHAPTER XV 
mariner’s joy 


J IM, pleasantly aware of a few days’ leave, 
came out upon the porch where his family 
was gathered, and sat himself down upon the 
rail. He looked where his son was looking, and 
saw that old Mr. Jones and another man, in 
two skiffs, were planting a mooring, while in¬ 
terested owners watched and shouted from the 
next pier. The skiffs, neck and neck like a pair 
of horses, balanced between them a clumsy sort 
of pile-driver above which the mooring-post 
thrust’ its head, while its foot wavered a 
fathom under water. The skiffs were sculled 
frantically; the owners shrieked, “No, no! 
Farther north!” and the mooring was planted 
finally, with much ado. 

“They Ve got it terribly far out,” Oarth 
commented. “Look at it—it’s farther out 
than anybody’s! After dark some launch is 
very apt to run their boat down, I should 
think.” 


170 


MARINER’S JOY 


171 


“Very likely,” Jim agreed. “But their 
boat’s an ugly engine in a box, anyway. I Ve 
seen it. They ’re putting it off from the street- 
way. ’ ’ 

“Everybody’s putting their boats off,” 
Garth sighed. “Do you suppose,” he added, 
“that sometimes some of them will take us 
sailing?” 

Jim knocked out his pipe and blew through 
it deliberately. Then he said: 

“I’ve bought a boat.” 

Garth and his mother flung at him together 
a look in which incredulity gave way to sheer 
joy. Jim nodded. 

“Really. Bought and paid for.” 

Garth had scrambled up beside his father on 
the railing, and slid an arm through his. 

“Where is she?” he asked. “What’s she 
like? What’s her name? How big is she? 
When can we see her? Right away? Where’s 
she going to be put off? When did you get 
her? What—” 

“Avast, avast!” cried Jim. “Curiosity is a 
trait I never did admire. ’ ’ 

He began slowly to refill and light the pipe. 
Garth cast a despairing look at his mother. 

“The boat,” Jim said finally, “is an old one. 


172 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

I bought her very cheap from a fisherman. She 
is a cat-boat. She’s about as big as the Ailou- 
ros was. She ’s not in Newport at all; there 
is n’t anything in the market here that I cared 
about. She ’s up yonder—” Jim flourished 
an arm vaguely outward—“ Plymouth way. 
And I thought it might be merry if you and I 
were to go up and sail her down. Do you sup¬ 
pose you can tie up a tooth-brush and an oil¬ 
skin coat in a bundle by this afternoon ?” 

Garth was indoors almost before his father 
had finished speaking, but not before he had 
embraced Jim so wildly as nearly to upset him 
from his perch on the railing. Garths voice 
drifted down to his parents from the window 
of his room. 

“I We got those already, Fogger. Is there 
anything else I ’ll need?” 

Elspeth laughed, and, putting down her sew¬ 
ing, went up to him. 

Jim and his son left Newport rather late in 
the afternoon. They carried one stout, small 
bag; they were both clad in blue dungaree; and 
each carried over his arm an oilskin “slicker.” 

“I hope we ’ll get out of here before either a 
superior officer or an inferior seaman perceives 


MARINER’S JOY 173 

me,” said Jim, looking guiltily around gray 
street-corners. 

But old Bridge Street was silent and empty; 
it happened that there were no bumping auto¬ 
mobiles nor hurrying moderns abroad to break 
an illusion of antiquity. Quaint old gray 
houses with hollowed stone door-steps, 
huddled there, dreaming shabby little dreams 
of earlier and better days. Jim and Garth 
crossed the tracks and walked down the rail¬ 
road-yard to the station, where the train 
waited, shooting listless spurts of steam into 
the air. 

i ‘But how did you know there was a boat in 
Plymouth? Will we spend a night on her? 
How long does it take to sail down? When did 
you buy her?” 

So Garth’s questions ran, but Jim, busily 
studying a partly unfolded chart, waved him 
aside in a detached manner, advising him to 
look out of the train window at Hummocks and 
Tiverton. 

They reached Plymouth after dark, and were 
quite ready to tumble into bed at an inn. 
As Jim continued to be firm and solemn and 
would say nothing but “Ah!” Garth gave up, 
and their conversation had become general. 


174 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Cocks were still crowing when they stole out 
next morning, and the dawn shadows lay long 
in the streets. On the water-front, however, 
fishermen were stirring and sails were creak¬ 
ing up here and there on small boats in the 
basin. Jim sought out a certain wharf-house 
and disappeared into it, leaving Garth outside 
in a growing fever of impatience. Presently 
Jim emerged, followed to the step by a griz¬ 
zled old man who chewed and talked at once 
and jerked a horny thumb in several confusing 
directions. “Yew ’ll shorely find him thar!” 
he concluded, and Jim seemed about to follow 
the directions. Then he reconsidered, and 
stood gazing out over the cluster of boats at 
anchor. His eyes swept the basin vaguely yet 
searchingly; lighted suddenly to keen recogni¬ 
tion ; then he said quietly to Garth: 

“See any boat you think I might have 
bought V’ 

Something in the tone made Garth look up 
quickly; there was a repressed excitement, the 
withholding of a secret that could not be kept 
much longer, something that made his heart 
skip and then race for a moment of breathless 
surmise. His eyes sought the boats swiftly, re¬ 
jecting one and another—and then he saw her. 



175 


MARINER’S JOY 

Beautiful, unmistakable, clad freshly in her 
new white, she lay there dreaming in a sort of 
grateful peace. Jim drew forth the glasses at 
his side and passed them silently to Garth, who 
focused them with a hand not altogether steady. 
She circled slowly as he looked, and her stern 
swung gradually within range of the glass. 
Ailouros —he read it half unconsciously from 
the fresh black letters. 

“When did you guess?” Jim asked. 

“I didn’t guess at all,” Garth said, “be¬ 
cause I’ve wanted to so often.” And he 
turned very suddenly around, because he 
deemed it as unmanly to shed tears of joy as of 
sorrow—or certainly to be seen so doing. In 
turning, he faced a very familiar figure hur¬ 
rying down the wharf. 

“Cap ’n ’Bijah!” Garth cried, incredulous. 

“To be sure,” Jim said. “You did n’t think 
she sailed herself down, did you? This is the 
way the Cap’n has been spending his annual 
leave. Pretty good connections, eh, Cap’n?” 
he added, as ’Bijah came up. 

The old man hauled off his cap, and then, as 
Jim thrust out his hand, ’Bijah rubbed his 
hastily on his trousers and clasped it terrif¬ 
ically. 


176 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Brung her in larst night,’’ he beamed. 
‘‘ My, but she’s slick an ’ sma’t! Don’t wonder 
ye did n’t want no other! Yessirree sir, pretty 
good connections!” 

They moved to the edge of the wharf and 
stood looking out. Below them the little skiff 
Cymba, as brilliantly green as the Ailouros was 
white, bobbed at the landing-stair. 

“Wal, Cap’n,” said the old man. “Wal, 
I done the best I could with her. But I had a 
turble time— turble —riddin’ her o’ the trail o’ 
thet heathen Portugee.” 

“She’s herself,” Jim said. “I couldn’t 
have done better with her. You’ve more than 
carried out my directions, it seems to me.” 

“Aw,” said the Cap’n, “I jest fooled with 
her, odd times. Thinks I, she’s wuth it, an’ 
they ’re wuth it, and ’t is a pleasure. Wal, 
folks, they’s all the vittles aboard of her you 
said, an’ I reeved a new rope on the killick, an’ 
yer blankets corned by the passles post an’ I 
fotched ’em out to her. Wal, if ye will be off, 
ye will. Your tide’s jest under you now. 
Reckon you ’re tickled, hey, Ga’th? Luck to 
ye!” 

The good Cap’ll stood waving a blue band- 



MARINER’S JOY 


177 


anna in a large brown hand, while Jim sculled 
the Cymba out to the cat-boat. Aboard of the 
Ailouros there was indeed no trail of the 
“heathen Portugee.” She looked as she had 
always looked, except that she glittered with 
new varnish and creaked with new ropes. Jim 
and Garth ran up the sail handily, all in a sort 
of breathless, triumphant dream. Garth, at 
the tiller, headed her up (as soon as his hand 
touched it, he found that he had not forgotten); 
Jim ran aft with the mooring-rope. She paid 
off slowly, filled away, and then like a great 
glorious sea-bird reached off suddenly, gather¬ 
ing way—come into her own once again. Jim, 
standing beside the mast, cried out involunta¬ 
rily with a gleeful shout, and then came aft, 
radiant, to take the tiller. 

Plymouth, warm in the new sunlight, became 
less astern; the clamor of harbor gulls grew, 
and passed, and dropped to silence. Once 
around Long Beach and out of the narrow chan¬ 
nel that winds across Plymouth Harbor, the 
Ailouros caught the brisk outside wind and 
sprang forward joyously. Abeam, the rolling 
gray-green coast-line, girdled by an edge of 
foam, reached out fold on fold. Unfamiliar 


178 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

headlands rose before—“a stern and rock- 
bound coast /’ And all this time Jim and his 
son had spoken no word, but had sailed their 
boat—theirs once more—in a deep, contented 
silence that only the Ailouros herself broke with 
the many sweet little familiar voices of her. 

Garth pinioned a flapping chart in the bottom 
of the cockpit and pointed out to his father 
what must be White Horse Beach, and what 
Manomet Point; and surely yonder was the 
lighthouse on Mary Ann Rocks. Steering and 
eating; that was the main business of the day. 
They seemed to find it necessary to eat very 
frequently. 

“We breakfasted so late,” Jim explained, 
“that this may be the end of breakfast, or the 
beginning of lunch, you see.” 

They couldn’t spare time to run in and an¬ 
chor and dine at leisure, so Jim, at the tiller, 
munched what he called ‘ 4 a piece in the hand, ’ 9 
while Garth sprawled on the hatch and hewed 
a bakery loaf to pieces with his clasp-knife. 

“I wish John Loomis was along,” Garth re¬ 
marked, perhaps reminded of that young man 
by the silver chain to which the clasp-knife was 
attached. “Of course, it’s kind of nicer— 
just you and me—but he’d like it so much.” 





MARINER’S JOY 


179 


“Is lie ever going to reappear?” Jim in¬ 
quired. “I want to see him. I like myster¬ 
ies.” 

“He said he was coming to see me when he 
got back,’ 9 Garth said, with faith; “ so he will . 9 9 

“That settles it,” said Jim. “Heave me an¬ 
other hunk of that, will you? I’m afraid our 
table-manners are n’t any too good, Pern. But 
then—there isn’t any table, so we can’t have 
’em. Do you suppose Miss Hampton would 
ever consent to eat chunks of bread thrown at 
her?” 

Garth pondered, and replied, somewhat to 
his father’s surprise: 

“I really do think she’d like to try.” 

Presently he said, vehemently: 

“Oh, isn’t she the nicest thing that ever 
was!” 

“Who, Miss Hampton?” Jim asked. 

“No,” said Garth, turning over on his back 
and looking up the mast, “the Ailouros.” 

Jim coaxed every inch from the boat that she 
would give, and late afternoon found her ly¬ 
ing to at the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal. 
A friendly tug, going through light, picked 
them up and towed her at a merry pace. The 
canal was bare and not interesting, and being 



180 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

towed was a carious, deadening sensation. 
Garth decided, on the instant, that he didn’t 
want to be a bargee, ever. The Ailouros 
seemed somehow humiliated, and made little 
runs, now to one side, now to the other, as if 
to get away from the obnoxious tow-rope. The 
tug-captain left the wheel to his mate and came 
and talked to them over the stern. 

“Say ye corned from Plymouth to-day?” he 
bawled. “Seems to me ye’ve got a pretty 
smart little yacht there. Guess ye know how 
to push her, too. "Where y’ goin’ to-night f ” 
“What ’s good anchoragef” Jim shouted. 
“I want to run in for the night soon after we 
leave the canal.” 

“Ye ’ll get a long channel when ye come 
out,” the tug-master roared, “plump full o’ 
buoys. Then ye get Wing’s Neck Light— 
that’s fixed white—and then Bird Island; 
that’s a flashin’. Run up into Sippecan Har¬ 
bor ; ye ’ll get anchorage there. Got a chart ? ’ ’ 
Jim answered in the affirmative. The tug- 
captain would have none of Jim’s proffered 
toll, when they cast off. The tug waited, siz¬ 
zling, while the Ailouros came up alongside. 

“Glad to be able to do ye a turn,” he insisted, 
holding the cigar Jim had finally pressed on 



181 


MARINER’S JOY 

him as though it were a stick of dynamite. 
i ‘Here, fill yer pipe, friend.” 

He thrust out a bent package of ‘ 1 Mariner’s 
Joy,” black as tar, and Jim rather gingerly 
rammed his pipe and put it, unlit, between his 
teeth. Later, when the tug was a blur of smoke 
ahead, Jim ruefully knocked out the tobacco 
over the side. 

“It just can’t be did,” he said, shaking his 
head regretfully. “After surviving a year of 
warfare on the high seas, I don’t want to be 
felled in my prime by a pipeful of Mariner’s 
Joy.” 

And now there was to be something for which 
Garth had always longed, a night on the boat. 
It had never been possible during the Silver 
Shoal days, for Jim was obliged to be on duty 
all night, within reach of his great lamp. Now 
it was for others to light and tend the beacons 
that began here and there to gleam out after 
the sunset. Twilight was settling swiftly, blur¬ 
ring the shore-line and drifting purple across 
the water. It was time to light up, too, aboard 
the Ailouros. Her little running-light, green 
on one side and red on the other, shone out 
suddenly as Jim shielded a precariously flick¬ 
ering match, one arm around the mast. He 


182 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

lit, too, the cockpit lantern and spread the chart 
beside it, while Garth steered. 

Garth lay back with one arm hooked over the 
tiller and steered by an early star. He kept 
it over the mast and lay looking at it with 
drowsy contentment—just the pale violet-gray 
sky, and the peak of the sail, and the faint white 
star with the mast pointing always to it as the 
Ailouros responded to his touch. That was the 
way to sail—on and on forever—He would 
steer the Ship of Dreams by a star always after 
this. But Jim raised his head and peered over 
the coaming, then folded up the chart. 

“Let’s have her, old man,” he said. 

He altered the course, ran down before the 
slackening wind until a few lonely house-lamps 
on shore shone closer, then luffed up sharply, 
looking out beyond the shadowy sail. 

“This may or may not be Ancoot Cove,” he 
said. “Anyway, it ’ll do, meseemeth. Hold 
her up, Pern, while I go for’ard.” 

His investigation apparently satisfied him, 
for in a moment there was the splash of the 
anchor and the swift rasp of the cable running 
out. The sail came down, all ghostly, suddenly 
revealing a patch of stars that it had hidden 
behind its dim expanse. 


MARINER’S JOY 


183 


There is something mysterious about a boat 
at night. It is hard to tell where boat stops 
and water begins, what is night sky and what 
unseen sail. A figure stepping beyond the ring 
of lantern-light seems to have stepped over¬ 
board and to have been swallowed by unrippled 
darkness. The sound of water comes from 
strange places, below and above and within. 
Garth felt somehow awed in the presence of an 
Ailouros so strange to him, and was glad when 
his father materialized again from the bow and 
stood with an arm over the boom, smiling down 
at him. 

44 The fisherman,” Jim said, 44 suggested that 
we have her towed down from Quimpaug by a 
steam trawler. Was n’t that a nice idea?” 

Garth generally tried to wither his father with 
deeply reproachful looks when he was guilty of 
such a speech as this. He did so now, and 
Jim said: 

44 I thought you’d think it was jolly. How 
about food?” 

They shielded a very surly can of solidified 
alcohol behind a tarpaulin, and coaxed its blue 
and flaring flame to heat a can of baked beans. 
These they ate on large chunks of the second 
loaf of Plymouth bread, with extreme relish, 





184 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

and finished their meal with a cake of choco¬ 
late equally divided. They both felt hugely 
elated over this supper somehow, which, eaten 
at home, would hardly have satisfied them, and 
they beamed at each other and at the Ailouros 
in entire content. The tin can, with an apology 
to Poseidon, Jim hurled overboard; hence there 
were no dishes to wash. 

“Mudder should learn to employ such meth¬ 
ods,’’ Jim commented, filling his pipe. 

But it seemed to each of them the most per¬ 
fect moment of all, when, having put on their 
sweaters, they rolled themselves up in their 
blankets and lay side by side in the cockpit. 
Jim, raising himself on one elbow, blew out 
the lantern. Then there was nothing but the 
masthead-light, passing slowly like a great yel¬ 
low planet among the stars as the AUouros 
lifted and swung. The water noises were very 
close—just below their ears—the eternal soft 
sucking, now and then a hollow smack. Some¬ 
times one constellation hung above them, some¬ 
times another, as the boat shifted at her moor¬ 
ing. And then they slept, Garth’s hand in 
Jim’s; and the Ailouros, awake all night, rose 
and fell and rose again, very quietly, on dark, 
unknown water. 


MARINER’S JOY 


185 


Dawn revealed their harbor, flat and 
gray in the first light, with rolling hills—gray, 
too—meeting it, and two farmhouses sending 
np small blue wraiths of smoke from new-lit 
fires. Jim shook off his blankets, blew out the 
riding-light, and, casting away his clothes, dived 
over the stern for a glorious, chilly, morning 
plunge. Garth did not wake until his father, 
hair dripping, was lacing his sneakers, one 
foot propped on the centerboard housing. 

4 ‘You might have woke me,” Garth protested 
drowsily. “I might have wanted to.” 

“You might have,” Jim said, rather skepti¬ 
cally. “Up with you, now, at all events, and 
lend a hand with this mystic fire-worshiper 
rite.” 

Breakfast was a complete success. The fry¬ 
ing-pan was scientifically washed over the side, 
and Jim got up the sail to a vociferous chantey 
about a poor old man and his horse, which 
seemed incoherent but effective. Up anchor— 
down helm—the Ailouros was off like a 
bird, with the promise of a fair wind on her 
quarter and a jolly freshening sea running 
beside her. 

“A blessing on the old boat,” said Jim. 
“She always did bring fair winds and favorable 


186 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

tides, didn’t she. Drag out your chart, pilot, 
and let’s have the course.” 

That night brought them well on to Westport, 
but it was not until noon of the next day that 
any familiar landmarks hove in sight. Then 
the red and white tower of Saconnet Light 
showed up to starboard, and they presently 
rounded Sachuest Point, seeing abeam the long 
lovely sweep of the Second Beach, with emerald 
water breaking in swift lines of foam and the 
Paradise Rocks standing up somber and pur¬ 
ple beyond. Before they made the light-ship it 
came on to blow, and Jim took in a reef. They 
also put on their slickers, and stowed all per¬ 
ishables under the hatch. 

“We ’ll have to beat every inch of the way 
in,” Jim said. 

‘ ‘ Hurray! ’ ’ cried Garth. 

“All right! We ’ll be in the dark, cold, and 
wet, before we get through; but we can’t grum¬ 
ble after the luck we’ve had.” 

Jim was right. The Ailouros whacked her 
way through ever-mounting seas, nor spared 
her occupants in the least. Every time she wal¬ 
lowed into a wave she doused them with a gal¬ 
lon or so of cold water. The sun backed swiftly 


MARINER’S JOY 


187 


down behind Conanicut, leaving them in a sud¬ 
den gray dusk out of which a frigid wind whis¬ 
tled. None of this served to cloud their spirits 
in the least, and their exultation grew with the 
size of the waves. At last the Ailouros beat 
around Newport Light and slid into the quietei- 
water of the inner harbor. 

4i Keep her headed for our library light,” 
Jim commanded as he relinquished the tiller, 
‘ 1 while I go and try to grab the mooring.” 

Elspeth, who was on the piazza beginning to 
feel just a little anxious, saw the running-light 
swing in and stop, and heard sundry clankings 
and creakings from the water. Her lantern 
bobbed down the pier, and she was immediately 
hailed by her returned sailors. 

“Does Mudder know?” Garth asked Jim. 

“By the great jib-boom, she doesn’t! Un¬ 
less she’s guessed!” Jim exclaimed. 

“What boat is that?” Elspeth cried. 

For answer, Garth hung the cockpit lantern 
over the stern, so that its light fell on the black 
letters. 

“Can you read it?” he shouted. 

After a moment of straining silence, she 
called back: 


188 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“I think I must need spectacles, or some¬ 
thing! I can’t make it anything but Ailou- 
ros!” 

The delighted laughter of her son reached her 
across the water. 

She waited in the dark, hearing the sail come 
down, seeing the running-light go out and the 
lantern swing over the side. Then there was 
the quick low splash of oars, a glow-worm light 
moving nearer, and the Cymba bumped the 
steps. Elspeth was clasped against wet, sticky 
oilskins, and received salt and violent kisses. 
Everybody talked, and a confusion of blankets 
and biscuit-boxes and oars and wet things was 
bundled on to the pier. 

Garth tried to tell his mother every detail of 
the entire cruise in five minutes, and fell asleep 
in the middle of it, over a steaming cup of 
chocolate. He did n’t know exactly how he got 
to bed, but there he was. From his pillow he 
saw Arcturus shining over the flagpole of the 
next pier, and hazily imagined he was steering 
his bed by it. But in less than no time the bed 
had to pilot itself, for Garth was sleeping the 
sleep of the weary and contented mariner. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE WHISPERING-POST 

I T was the next evening, when the crnise was 
still the only thing to talk of, and every one 
had a tendency to keep looking out of the win¬ 
dow to he sure that the Ailouros was really 
there. Garth was explaining things to his 
mother, with the chart extended over the sew¬ 
ing on her lap, when there came a rapping at 
the outer door. 

“It might be Miss Robinson,” Elspeth said. 
“She uses the knocker. Will you go, Jim?” 

Jim went. At the door, illumined by the 
light from the hall, stood a young man with a 
brown face and a hopeful expression. He 
wore a rather shabby blue suit and a tropical 
grass hat. 

“Well, as I live!” he cried genially, with a 
slow, charming smile; “you ’re Fogger!” 

Jim couldn’t deny it; neither could he help 
looking somewhat taken aback. Then light 
dawned upon him. 


190 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“I ’ll stake my pay I know who you are!” he 
said. 44 Garth was right. You Ye John Loomis, 
and you ? ve come back!” 

By this time Garth himself was on the scene 
and Elspeth hurrying forward. Garth and 
Loomis were the only people who seemed not 
at all surprised. 

“You see,” Loomis explained, “I went to 
your place in New York, and there Mr. Sinclair 
said you’d gone. He told me where, so I 
came.” 

It all seemed very simple, certainly. Loomis 
smiled happily. He was surely less thin and 
pale. He wore a band of silver about his left 
wrist, that gleamed as he turned his tropical 
hat about in his hands. 

44 Where are you staying?” Jim asked. As 
Loomis had no luggage with him, Jim presumed 
he had left it somewhere. 

“I don’t know,” the young man said, as 
though such an idea had not occurred to him 
until that moment. 4 4 1 just came from the sta¬ 
tion, you see.” 

44 You must stay with us,” said Elspeth de¬ 
cisively. 

4 4 Of course Garth added. 


THE WHISPERING-POST 191 

“That’s ever so good of you,” Loomis said. 
“May I? You can’t think how much I’ve 
wanted to see you all. I don’t know; it helps, 
somehow.” 

“Helps what?” said Elspeth. 

‘ ‘ Helps, ’’ Loomis repeated. He seemed to be 
struggling with an idea. “Having friends 
helps one—doesn’t it?” 

“But you have friends,” Elspeth reminded 
him. She was thinking of Wyeth Merriman’s 
friends. 

“No, not any,” he said, rather wistfully. 
“And one doesn’t make them down there. It 
was fun, though. Garth, I ’ll have to tell you 
some day what fun it was.” 

“I want you to,” said Garth. 

“Upon my word, he more than fills my expec¬ 
tations,” Jim told his wife much later that eve¬ 
ning, as he fastened window-catches and put 
out lights. “It turned out he hadn’t any lug¬ 
gage ; it just did n’t exist. It’s on some South 
American freighter, or somewhere equally ac¬ 
cessible. He accepted my pongee pajamas and 
my other razor gratefully. He apologized 
gently for his clothes—said he really had meant 


192 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

to get a suit in New York, but when he o&me 
away from Bob’s he was so anxious to get here 
that he forgot it.” 

“Probably he hasn’t money enough, any¬ 
way,” Elspeth said. “ Celia says he has lots 
—in his own name—but there seems to be no 
way of getting at it without immense coil, and 
she keeps hoping he ’ll come back to himself 
and be able to get it. ’ ’ 

“ And meanwhile he’s been living from hand 
to mouth,” Jim mused. “Queer as the deuce. 
But the chap is charming, somehow. I wanted 
to sort of tuck him in and tell him it was going 
to be all right. Yet—well, I never saw such a 
curious mixture of complete composure and 
competency, with a wistful and childish help¬ 
lessness.” 

“We simply must keep him here, Jim,” Els¬ 
peth said, “and see what we can do. I sup¬ 
pose we ought to ask Celia down presently 
and try to untangle things. If only she ’ll 
have restraint enough to keep still.* It’s 
awfully hard on her. She’s really quite 
a little brick, you know—loyal as she can 
be.” 

“Do you suppose,” Jim asked reflectively, as 
he paused at the foot of the stairs, “that our 




THE WHISPERING-POST 193 

friend John has enough money to buy himself 
so much as a tooth-brush f ” 

At first Jim was a little loath to entrust his 
son and the Ailouros to Loomis’s care, but one 
sail convinced him that however vague the man 
might be about his baggage, he could certainly 
handle a boat. Garth admired him, and he loved 
Garth, so Jim went oft to the Torpedo Station 
with mind tolerably at rest. It was surely no 
trouble to entertain their guest. Sailing was 
all he wanted to do, and as Garth fell in per¬ 
fectly with his wishes they were both content. 
Jim and Elspeth joined them whenever it was 
possible, and sometimes they included Miss 
Esther Robinson in the party. 

This lady was charmed by Loomis, as no one 
failed to be, and many an evening he and one 
or more Pemberleys spent on her broad, pleas¬ 
ant piazza or in her dim, delightful living- 
room. Loomis had acquired some white trous¬ 
ers and rajah silk shirts, and he did look very 
handsome, with his brown face and wide-set 
dark eyes, and his fine hands with the gleam of 
the silver circlet at his wrist. He told Garth 
that an old Indian gave him that because he 
fished the old man out of a pit where his en- 




194 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

emies had put him; but how Loomis had come 
to be mixed up in such doings he couldn’t or 
would n’t say. It all seemed to be a part of the 
“fun” he’d had “down there.” 

Of course he was shown the whispering-post. 
Garth never failed, at each visit to Miss Bobin- 
son, to lay his ear against that remarkable 
corner, just on general principles. He had lin¬ 
gered behind, on this particular evening, to 
listen at it in the darkness of the south room, 
while the grown-ups were extending their leave- 
taking in the hall. 

“Come along, Pern!” Fogger called to him. 

He came only to the doorway, when he re¬ 
sponded, and he looked triumphant and excited. 

“I heard clinkings in there,” he announced; 
“ghost ones, in the post. I knew it was magic, 
and something would happen.” 

“You heard what?” several voices inquired. 

“Clinkings,” Garth replied; “soft little 
ones.” 

“Nonsense,” said Elspeth; “it’s time you 
went to bed.” 

6 ‘ Thee must have heard Martha putting away 
the silver up-stairs,” said Miss Eobinson. 
‘‘ The sound might very well come down through 
the post.” 


THE WHISPERING-POST 


195 


“That was it, I fear,” said Jim. “Too 
bad your spooks are exorcised so speedily, 
Pem. ’ ’ 

Garth looked rather disappointed; and just 
then it was noticed that John Loomis had van¬ 
ished. He came back in a moment from the 
south room, and it was evident from his ex¬ 
pression of gentle solemnity that he was taking 
the ghosts seriously. 

“There are clinkings,” he said, “and 
creaks.” 

“This old house makes the most curious 
squeaks and creaks at times as it warps and 
swells in the fog,” Miss Esther Robinson as¬ 
sured him. 

“It couldn’t clink,” said Loomis gravely. 

“Mice in the partition,” Jim said. 

“Mice couldn’t clink,” Loomis persisted. 

“It was like little tinklings,” Garth said; 
“wasn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Loomis agreed. 

“It was most certainly Martha,” Miss Robin¬ 
son said. “The silver is kept at night in a 
closet above the dining-room. We must try 
some day and see if it does n’t sound down the 
post. Martha!” she called, stepping to the 
foot of the stairs; “Martha, is thee there?” 


196 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

There was no reply; the old house was com¬ 
pletely still. 

“She must have gone on up to bed imme¬ 
diately,” Miss Robinson said. “I ’ll ask her 
in the morning.” 

She smiled heartily at them all from the 
door-stone. When she returned to her hall she 
hesitated, and then could not resist going into 
the dark, silent south room and putting her ear 
to the whispering-post. All was utterly quiet; 
there was not a sound until a boat in the harbor 
broke the silence with her whistling. 

“Those boys certainly have very good imagi¬ 
nations!” laughed Miss Esther Robinson as she 
went up her gray stairs. 

But the next morning she was rapping at the 
Pemberleys , brass knocker. Garth had seen 
her coming along Washington Street, and 
opened the door to her. 

“Does thee know,” she began at once, “it’s 
surely very funny. Martha put away the silver 
right after tea last night, and went up to her 
room immediately to do some mending. Is thee 
perfectly sure, Garth, thee heard that little 
sound?” 

“Perfectly,” said Garth. “So ’s John 
Loomis.” 




THE WHISPERING-POST 197 

‘‘Then it must be mice, as thy father said.” 

“But, as John Loomis said,” Garth insisted, 
“mice could n’t tinkle—unless they were fairy¬ 
tale ones with bells around their necks.” 

“That’s unlikely,” said Miss Robinson. 

However, Garth and Loomis returned with 
her and spent half the morning hooting through 
the post, jingling Miss Robinson’s silverware 
about in different rooms, and coming to no more 
satisfactory conclusion than ever. The post 
would not clink for them itself, no matter how 
long they waited; so they went home to lunch, 
and put forward a hundred idle and impossible 
conjectures as they sailed out to Castle Hill 
that afternoon. 

When they returned, tousled and slightly 
wet—for they had had to beat back—they found 
a pretty lady in a lavender organdie dress, 
sitting with Elspeth on the piazza. It was Ce¬ 
lia Hampton, and, as on another momentous 
day a year ago, they were sipping iced tea. 

“Just in time; you look hot,” said Elspeth. 
“Celia, you’ve met Mr. Loomis. John, I’m 
sure you remember Miss Hampton 1 !” 

“Of course,” said Loomis, looking grave and 
careful. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Celia, gallantly, “at Mr. Sin- 


198 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

clair’s studio—such a hot day, just before you 
sailed off to the tropics.’’ 

“I mean—before that,” Loomis said. 

The color swept into Celia’s startled face. 

“I—why—I think we may have. In Cleve¬ 
land?” she hazarded. ‘ 4 Were n’t you in Cleve¬ 
land?” 

“I don’t know where,” Loomis said. “Yes, 
thank you, I will have some tea. Please for¬ 
give our being so grubby—boats are such nice 
messy things. Do you like them, Miss Hamp¬ 
ton?” 

“I’m going to learn all about them,” said 
Celia, still a little dazed from the moment that 
had just hovered and passed. “You and Garth 
must teach me. I’ve really never had a chance 
to like them. I—you will, won’t you?” 

Garth was not overwhelmed with joy at the 
idea of the dainty Miss Celia’s being added to 
their expeditions, but she did seem very much 
in earnest. Loomis apparently had nothing to 
say, and so Garth answered for him. 

‘ ‘ Of course we will; oh, you ’ll like it. That 
is, if you really don’t mind getting wettish and 
all blown to pieces.” 

“You don’t need to take her on such very 
violent sails, dear,” Elspeth suggested, jig- 


THE WHISPERING-POST 199 

gling the pitcher of tea to hear whether or not 
any ice remained. 

“I sha hi ’t mind anything,” Celia said res¬ 
olutely. “I shall like it all.” 

Elspeth, watching her eyes as they sought 
Loomis’s impassive face, believed that she 
would. 


CHAPTER XVII 

CELIA SAILS 

E STHER ROBINSON had heard the 
strange tale of Celia and Loomis, and she 
was very eager to help entertain “those poor 
young people,’’ as she called them. This re¬ 
sulted in her asking the entire Pemberley 
household to tea with her. Such sudden large 
additions to her family seemed never to trouble 
Miss Robinson in the least. Her hospitable old 
house was frequently filled with batches of 
nieces and nephews and appreciative guests who 
came and went throughout the summer. Sup¬ 
per was laid on a great round table in an angle 
of the piazza, a delightful place in which to eat, 
with the merry accompaniment of flapping awn¬ 
ings and whistling boats. With the last gold of 
sunset behind Conanicut the breeze died away, 
the harbor smoothed to patterned opal and am¬ 
ber, and Newport Light shone out palely. A 

canoeful of merry young people paddled by, and 

200 


CELIA SAILS 


201 


the sound of their mandolins drifted pleasantly 
in, softened by distance over water. Far down 
seaward, Beaver Tail flashed its brilliant 
light more and more sharply as the twilight 
grew. 

Songs were as usual the order when darkness 
deepened, and, after various ditties from Jim 
and his hostess, Loomis, to every one’s sur¬ 
prise, lifted up his voice and sang a strange 
song in an unknown tongue. Apparently it was 
another of the things he had acquired 4 ‘down 
there.’’ He had a very soft and liquid tenor, 
and the eery cadence of the song enchanted 
every one. Then Celia, with a studied care¬ 
lessness, leaned forward and said: 

“Do you know ‘The Sally Gardens,’ Mr. 
Loomis 1 ’ ’ 

No one else did, assuredly. Loomis knit his 
brow for a moment. 

“Why, yes,” he said slowly; “I used to sing 
that. Yes—now, wait a minute.” 

The air of “The Sally Gardens” is one of 
haunting, wistful pathos, with the minor croon 
that only the old Irish ballad has. 


>> 


“ ‘Down by the sally gardens 
My love and I did meet . . . 


202 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

Loomis ’ sweet, soaring voice filled the lis¬ 
tening darkness. He reached the last lines: 

“ ‘She bade me take love aisy 
As the grass grows on the weirs; 

But I was young and foolish, 

And now am full of tears. . . ” 

If Celia’s tears brimmed over, only Elspeth, 
sitting next her, knew it. 

“But haven’t I—didn’t I sing that for you 
before!” Loomis was saying, in a slightly sur¬ 
prised voice. “The other day—the other time 
. . . that other time—” 

“I’ve heard you sing it before,” Celia ven¬ 
tured. 

No one stirred. It seemed as though this 
was to be the moment when John Loomis should 
remember how Wyeth Merriman had sung it to 
her. But Loomis turned the silver bracelet 
round and round on his wrist and stared into 
the dark. Celia had perhaps grown over-cau¬ 
tious. She dared not urge him. 

“Sing about the Bell Buoy, Pemberley,” said 
Loomis to Jim. The moment had again passed, 

As soon as Jim had finished his song, Miss 
Robinson spoke. 


CELIA SAILS 203 

4 ‘Do any of you see a man on my pier?” she 
asked. 

“I do,” said Jim. 

“Yes,” several voices agreed. 

“Do you think he’s come up from a boat, 
Mr. Pemberley?” 

“Looks that way,” Jim replied. 

“I just ask, because I’m very sure I saw a 
man there last night, and I ’d like to know 
what he’s doing.” 

“He ’s walking along the sea-wall now,” 
Garth stated. 

“If you ’ll excuse me,” said Miss Robinson, 
“I believe I ’ll go down there and ask if he 
knows it’s a private pier.” 

“I ’ll ask him that,” said Jim, and was down 
the steps soundlessly before Miss Robinson had 
risen. He came back very soon. 

“He’d gone,” said Jim. “He must have 
nipped across the streetway pretty speedily. 
Did you see him come out past the boat- 
house?” 

“He never came out past the boat-house,” 
said Loomis. 

“Well, he isn’t behind it now,” Jim de¬ 
clared; “he must have. It’s too dark to be 
sure, Loomis.” 


204 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

“Did you see his boat, Mr. Pemberley?” Miss 
Robinson inquired. 

“It may have been under the pier,” Jim said. 
“I couldn’t be sure.” 

“Well,” said Miss Robinson, “I really think 
he might land at the skid in the street-way in¬ 
stead of at my pier, if he ’s going in that direc¬ 
tion anyway.” 

As they were leaving, Garth exhibited the 
whispering-post to Celia. 

‘‘ Only fancy! ’’ she exclaimed, obediently put¬ 
ting an ear to it. “How amusing! And does 
it always make those curious little sounds to 
itself ? How uncanny of it! ” 

“What sounds?” Garth said. 

“The little tinkling noise.” 

Several heads were immediately inclined to¬ 
ward the post, but it was completely still. 

“It’s stopped, now,” Celia said. “Or per¬ 
haps I imagined it.” 

“I think you did!” Jim agreed laughing. 

Garth and Loomis took Celia for a sail, ac¬ 
cording to agreement. She arrayed herself in 
the most appropriate clothes her wardrobe- 
trunk contained, but Garth, holding the Cymba 


CELIA SAILS 


205 


against the steps of the pier, looked frowningly 
upon her white serge skirt and suede pumps. 

“It ’s a shame to mess up your good clothes/’ 
he said. “No matter how carefully you start 
off, you always get sloppy before the end.” 

Celia could make no reply because she was 
caught in the perilous position of having one 
foot on a slimy step and the other on the edge 
of a lurching boat. 

“Don’t step on the gunwale— wait!" Garth 
shouted, and Loomis rescued the lady bodily 
from a ducking. 

“Shall I sit here in the back?” she asked, 
somewhat shaken by the doubly terrific experi¬ 
ence of nearly falling into the water and of 
having Loomis’s arms about her. 

Garth, who did not forget that this expedi¬ 
tion was in the nature of a lesson, corrected her 
at once. 

“Not the back—the stern,” he explained. 
“Yes, do sit there, right away.” 

Celia felt that the Ailouros, when they 
reached her, was a much safer and more sub¬ 
stantial craft than the skiff. She leaned back 
and gave herself up to watching Loomis’s 
quick, certain movements as he went about get- 



206 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

ting up the sail. It gave her both joy and 
anguish to watch him. There was comfort in 
seeing unchanged certain characteristic turns 
of the hand and attitudes of the body. When 
he threw his dark hair from his forehead with 
a sudden impetuous motion and flung back his 
head to look up the mast, he was no one but 
Wyeth Merriman. She expected him to turn 
back to her with the old look kindling in his eye 
and her name joyously on his lips. When 
he did turn, to speak to Garth, his gently 
perplexed brown eyes were those of John 
Loomis. 

She listened to the incomprehensible talk. 

“Can you hold the peak, Garth?” 

“Wait a sec; the throat r s pinching!” 

“Now then, handily! Chock-a-block!” 

The sail creaked up. Garth explained things 
hastily to Celia as they happened, and she tried 
very hard to understand. Once away from the 
buoy it seemed indeed ‘ 1 plain sailing.’ 9 Loomis 
settled himself at the tiller and asked if he 
might smoke. 

“Where shall we go?” he inquired. “Are 
you a good sailor, Miss Hampton?” 

“I don’t know; I’ve never sailed, you see.” 

“Better not go out to the light-ship, per- 


CELIA SAILS 207 

haps,” Loomis mused. “It’s just right for it, 
though. What do you think, skipper?” 

Garth squinted out at the choppy blue be¬ 
yond the inner harbor. 

“Oh, well,” he said, “we might go on out 
that way and see.” 

Loomis gave Celia a careful lesson in steer¬ 
ing. She tried again and again to meet his 
eyes; surely, surely if he looked full at her he 
would remember. 

“And some day, Celia, I ’ll teach you to 
sail—” couldn’t he remember saying that! 
No, John Loomis had never said it. Somehow 
his eyes always slipped past her—to the tiller, 
or the shore, or the sunny peak of the sail. He 
had looked forward to it so joyously. Yet now 
he was teaching her to sail; and he didn’t re¬ 
member. 

Alas, not far beyond the Dumplings, as the 
sea grew Celia’s pallor sank to gray; her eyes 
assumed a fixed and fervent expression. She 
was learning that she was not a good sailor. 
Loomis saw it, and came about and ran in to¬ 
ward Conanicut. 

“Afraid you wouldn’t like it outside,” he 
said with gentle concern. 

“When it’s so beautiful in here, why should 


— ^r\ 


208 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

one go outside at all?” Celia asked, able to 
smile again in smoother water. 

They slipped along near the lovely Conanicut 
shore, close enough to see the warm slopes of 
huckleberry and bay, and tumbled granite 
boulders. 

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Loomis agreed. 

“Beautifuller, but not such fun,” maintained 
Garth, who lay on the hatch, and was a little 
disappointed over not going outside. 

They ran on to Gould Island, and, when they 
turned, met a stiff little squall that was just 
piping in from the Atlantic. The Ailouros, al¬ 
ways out of temper in a head sea, splashed 
about more than she needed and contrived to 
splatter Celia thoroughly. Celia thought this 
must be nothing short of a hurricane, and mar¬ 
veled that the faces of Loomis and Garth 
showed no concern whatever. Since they 
laughed, she tried to laugh, too, and presently, 
to her own intense surprise, found that her 
laughter was no longer an echo. 

“Don’t you really like it?” shouted Garth, 
still on the hatch. “Woof!” he added, as the 
Ailouros wallowed and slatted a bucket of water 
completely over him. 



CELIA SAILS 209 

I I do!” Celia shouted back, shivering 
with cold and fear and ecstasy. 

She was still pale and very wet, but smiling, 
when she came up from the pier. 

“Boys!” said Elspeth, looking at her son and 
Loomis with reproachful blue eyes. 

“It ’s all right,” Celia protested. “I quite 
enjoyed it. And when it’s really bumpy and 
exciting, with water coming in, you don’t have 
time to wonder if you feel queerish. ” 

“Oh! Did you feel queerish?” Elspeth 
asked. 

“I sha Vt any more,” Celia said. 

“Those bad people,” Elspeth sighed. “I 
told them ‘a little gentle sail, up the bay/ ” 

“But you never can tell what it’s going to 
do,” Garth protested. 

Jim’s ideas of an introduction to sailing were 
perhaps more in keeping with his wife’s. An 
evening sail—as many as the Ailouros would 
hold—with Miss Robinson and her guitar, and 
so soft a wind that there was scarcely a sound 
of water at the bow, and a great golden moon 
floating up over Newport. Garth sat on the 
hatch and lay down and hung his heels over 
the coaming whenever Jim sang out, “Hard a- 


210 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

lee!” This was quite often, and Miss Robin¬ 
son, who also sat on the hatch, had to hop down, 
guitar and all, into the cockpit in the middle of 
a song, to avoid being plunked overboard by the 
boom. 

But Elspeth had a fear that perhaps Celia 
was really only enjoying all this sort of thing 
for the sake of Loomis, who loved it. For that 
reason she tried to take Celia into the rest of 
Newport, to music at the Art Association, and 
for a drive here and there. 

Above bare white ways that climbed crook¬ 
edly from narrow, busy Thames Street, New¬ 
port on the hill lay bathed in the shade of dusty 
maples. Glittering motors flickered up and 
down the Avenue; occasionally a smooth-roll¬ 
ing victoria passed, drawn by fine, prancing 
horses. But not the gay modes in the little Ave¬ 
nue shops, nor the modest entrance of the famed 
Casino, nor the gigantic houses of the great, 
kindled any enthusiasm in Celia’s face. Over 
smooth green lawns, beyond marble balustrades 
and drooping trees, burned blue vistas of the 
sea. Summer Newport was at its loveliest, 
with blue hydrangeas shining down shaded 
aisles, and tree-bordered streets everywhere 
ending in a glimpse of harbor or ocean. In 


CELIA SAILS 


211 


contrast to the cool and luxuriant hill, old Mill 
and Church streets tumbled in a glare of heat 
to the harbor below, between their historic 
houses, watched over by the pale spire of Trin¬ 
ity, loveliest of colonial churches. 

As the gray stretch of Washington Street 
opened among its elms, and the Conanicut 
whistled in turning Goat Island, Celia sighed. 

“It’s a quiet little corner, after the hill,” 
Elspeth said, feeling somehow responsible and 
apologetic on account of the sigh. 

“I was just thinking,” Celia said; “it’s a 
different town, isn’t it. A different world.” 

“Quite different,” Elspeth agreed. 

“Nice world,” Celia said. “Oh, I’ve lived 
with the other so long—the world of shops and 
motors and tea-parties. Don’t you know Al¬ 
fred Noyes’s thing: 

“. . . We have come 
Back to heaven, back to home. ...” 

The black door opened beneath its fan-light, 
and Garth stood on the threshold. 

“Hullo!” said he. “Supper’s just ready.” 

Indeed, candles were lit in the dining-room, 
and beyond them, through the open window, 
was the shining golden reach of the harbor, 
filled with peace. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A FALL AND A FIND 

M ISS ESTHER ROBINSON was alone 
again, after an influx of young rela¬ 
tives, and Garth, going to visit her one morn¬ 
ing, found her mending oars. She was seated 
on the steps of the piazza, busily prying an¬ 
cient copper tacks from their fastnesses in or¬ 
der to put new canvas around the middle of the 
oars. She set Garth to work scraping another 
pair with a bit of glass, and sandpapering them 
in readiness for a coat of varnish. 

Beyond the flagged space in front of the 
piazza there were spires of hollyhock against 
the water, and trumpet-vine fingering the 
porch rails and tiptoeing across the first floor¬ 
boards. It was in bloom where it was fes¬ 
tooned over the old boat-house, blowing brave 
orange trumpets across the lawn. The air was 
filled with the buzzing stillness of summer 
sunshine. Enough wind came from the water 

to rattle the awning lazily. 

212 


A FALL AND A FIND 


213 


“Now, then,” said Miss Robinson, “thee 
might go down to the hoat-honse and see if 
thee can find the shellac. If there ’s spar 
varnish, all the better. They ’re on a little 
shelf opposite the door.” 

Garth stood his oars up beside the steps and 
went down to the boat-house. It was at the 
edge of the sea-wall, and its door faced the 
water. It was nearly as old as the house, and 
in rather poor repair. Garth fell over a loose 
floor-hoard in crossing to the shelf, and re¬ 
turned with the shellac, rubbing his elbow. 

“Did thee hurt thyself?” Miss Robinson 
asked solicitously. 

“No,” he said, “I just tripped on a wiggly 
hoard and hanged my funny-bone.” 

“I didn’t know there was a wiggly board,” 
Miss Esther Robinson said. “Mr. Jones must 
see to that.” 

They worked away very sociably, and finally 
looked with satisfaction at three pairs of 
neatly bound and newly varnished oars glisten¬ 
ing in the sun as they leaned beside the well 
to dry. 

“I ’ll put away the shellac and the ham¬ 
mer,” Garth offered, as Miss Robinson went 
off to wash out the sticky brushes. 


214 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

He put the can back on its shelf in the boat¬ 
house, and, forgetting already about the unsafe 
board, turned back. He stepped upon its loose 
end, and suddenly half the floor seemed to rise 
up and slide beneath his feet, and he caught 
at the edge of a black hole and missed it. For 
a little while he was too much hurt to see where 
he had tumbled to, for he had wrenched his 
bad leg. Then he took a long breath and held 
on to his knee hard with both hands, and looked 
around. He seemed to be sitting in a small, 
damp cellar. 

“But it y s funny for a boat-house to have a 
cellar,” he thought. 

The walls—as much of them as he could see 
—were built of old masonry, and there were 
wet places on them and on the floor. Faint, 
dusty light fell from the hole above him and 
dimly illuminated the place where he sat, but 
he could not tell whether or no the cellar ex¬ 
tended beyond. He stood up, with some dif¬ 
ficulty, for his leg had a bothersome way of 
not obeying him—particularly just after fall¬ 
ing down a hole—and found that the boat¬ 
house floor was above his head. He could 
reach the edge of it, and tried to get a toe¬ 
hold and clamber up. But again his strength 


A FALL AND A FIND 


215 


proved not enough for such gymnastic feats, 
and he sat down once more upon the damp 
floor of his prison. 

For prison it certainly was. Two or three 
shouts convinced him that no one at the house 
would hear him. 

“I wonder if Miss Robinson ’ll think I just 
went home after I put away the shellac, and 
never look for me,” thought Garth, rather 
mournfully. 

It was some minutes before he bethought 
him that probably in that case his mother and 
father would come seeking his whereabouts be¬ 
fore he altogether perished of starvation. 

“Though I’m very hungry, now,” he re¬ 
flected grimly. 

Garth had begun to reach the age when a 
small boy carries several pounds of miscel¬ 
laneous articles in his pockets. Among his in¬ 
separable possessions he numbered a flash¬ 
light, and this he now took from his trousers 
pocket and turned upon his dungeon. On 
three sides its stone walls hemmed him in; on 
the fourth, toward the house, there was no 
wall whatever, only a low, black opening. 
Garth sat staring at it for some time before it 
burst upon him with a rush of excitement that 




216 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

it was the entrance to a tunnel. With his thumb 
firmly pressed upon the button of the 
flash-light, Garth arose and entered the 
tunnel. 

It was just high enough to let him walk up¬ 
right, with occasional duckings of his head. It 
was narrow, and damp, and very moldy-smell¬ 
ing. Once or twice he almost turned back, but 
then he very sensibly reflected that as there 
was but one passage he couldn’t very well 
get lost, and that it was quite unlikely that 
there were dragons, pirates, or anything like 
that at the other end. The tunnel suddenly 
took a run upward and stopped at a ladder-like 
flight of stairs, so narrow that any one broader 
than Garth would have had to go up sideways. 
The walls were no longer of stone but of wood, 
and the air was so hot and musty that it nearly 
choked him. 

Garth climbed upward cautiously, and sud¬ 
denly the light flickered across something that 
flashed and shimmered and twinkled. Garth 
stared, while the electric flash-light, its battery 
exhausted, winked feebly and died. Then he 
sat down in a heap, partly because his leg 
would do no more, and partly for wonder at 
;what he had seen. As he sat there with the 


A FALL AND A FIND 217 

dead flash-light in his hand, he heard a voice 
singing, close to his ear. 

‘ ‘We are three jolly, jolly sailor-boys, 

And we ’re newly come from South Amerikee. . . 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 

M ISS ESTHER ROBINSON, who had 
been making herself tidy for luncheon, 
came briskly down to the south room to see 
-whether or not her young guest would stay 
and lunch with her. Not finding him in the 
living-room, on the porch or pier, she concluded 
that he had gone home, impatient of waiting 
longer for her. She turned back from the glass 
doors that led to the piazza, and went to look 
at the barometer that hung beside the whis¬ 
pering-post. 

“We are three jolly, jolly sailor-boys,” 
hummed Miss Robinson, as she saw that it 
marked “set fair.” 

Then, although she was a courageous and 
not at all a nervous lady, she leaped back from 
the wall as though a revolver had been leveled 
at her from it. For from some indefinite place 
came terrific thumpings, and a voice which 
cried out: 


218 


THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 219 

11 Miss—Esther—Robinson! ’ 9 

She had no difficulty* whatever in recognizing 
the voice. 

“Why, Garth, where is thee?” she cried, her 
composure decidedly shaken. 

“In here!” the voice returned distinctly if 
indefinitely. “A secret place! There’s treas¬ 
ure and jewels and everything!” 

Miss Robinson, who fancied he must be play¬ 
ing a pirate game, ran out upon the porch and 
in at the door of the little back entry which 
lay next to the south room. There bicycles and 
boat-lanterns and rope and garden-tools and 
such things were kept. But Garth was not to 
be seen among them. 

“Where is thee?” cried Miss Robinson in 
agitation, coming back to the south room by 
way of the dining-room and hall, to make sure. 

“Inside somewhere,” Garth’s voice in¬ 
sisted. “It’s the secret place! Come down to 
the boat-house, quick , Miss Robinson, and help 
me out.” 

Miss Robinson did indeed go to the boat¬ 
house quickly—so quickly that she arrived there 
long before Garth, in the dark, retraced his 
way through the passage. She stood looking 
in uncomprehending amazement at the uncov- 


220 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

ered pit in the floor of her boat-house, and 
nearly tumbled into it herself when Garth’s 
curly head, much besprinkled with dust and 
cobwebs, suddenly emerged from it. 

“It goes right up into the house,” he gasped 
when she had pulled him up to the floor. 
“Treasure’s in there—really truly Spanish 
treasure—pearls and rubies and diamonds— 
and your silver coffee-pot, I think; that is, 
there is a silver coffee-pot, and—” 

“Child, what is thee talking about?” said 
Miss Robinson. 

She knew that Garth had a lively imagina¬ 
tion, but she had never known him to carry his 
fancies quite so far. 

“Really,” he said. “That’s why there are 
tinklings. It’s somewhere near the whisper¬ 
ing-post. There are stairs—little ones—only 
my light went out so that I could n’t see where 
they went. But the treasure’s all over them. ’ ’ 

Miss Robinson might possibly agree that a 
secret staircase existed in her old house—in¬ 
deed, there were stories to that effect in the 
family—but that it was strewn with rubies and 
pearls she could not be expected to believe. 

“Thee must have seen something in there 
that thee thought was treasure, Garth,” she 





THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 221 

protested. “A little thing will shine very 
brightly when a light catches it. . . . Why, 
child, thee can hardly walk; what’s the mat¬ 
ter V 9 For Garth had staggered and clutched 
her suddenly. 

“I think I whacked my knee pretty hard,” 
he said, “when I fell down the hole. I forgot 
about it . 9 9 

Miss Robinson picked him up in strong, kind 
arms, and carried him to the house. He was 
very hot and dusty and tired and somehow con¬ 
fused. He was glad to rest his head on the 
shoulder of her crisp, snowy, pique blouse, and 
see nothing but the curious old agate brooch 
she wore. 

Miss Robinson brushed the cobwebs off him 
and put him in the hammock. Then she went 
out of her open door and walked quickly up 
Washington Street to the Pemberleys , house, 
the little silver trinkets at her watch-fob jin¬ 
gling hastily as she went. 

Elspeth and Celia and John Loomis fol¬ 
lowed Miss Robinson to her house. Jim, be¬ 
ing at the Torpedo Station, was unfortunately 
out of it. Garth, who had left the hammock, 
was found balanced on a chair, diligently 


222 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

thumping the paneled wall of the south room. 

“It does sound hollow ,’’ he announced. ‘‘Go 
around and see if you can hear it on the other 
side . 91 

No one could hear it through on the opposite 
side. It was quite plain that the secret stair 
ran up between the partitions. Then there was 
a rush for the boat-house. John Loomis and 
Garth, armed with a larger and more reliable 
flash-light, entered the tunnel, while the others 
went back to listen in the south room. Loomis 
had to bend double to go through the passage. 

“It r s like a Peruvian treasure-house / 9 he 
murmured. 

“Wait till you see the treasure!” Garth said. 

Garth had not himself caught more than a 
glimpse of the treasure before his light went 
out. Now he and Loomis crouched on the steps 
staring, amazed. For there were emerald pend¬ 
ants, collars of pearls, diamond ear-drops, 
costly rings, bracelets twinkling with sapphires, 
and, above and behind all this, a stately, tar¬ 
nished, silver coffee-service engraved with the 
arms of France and the United States. 

“Did pirates hide it here? Does it all be¬ 
long to Miss Robinson?” Garth asked. “I 



“It does sound hollow!” 





























































































































THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 223 

know the coffee-pots do, because Rochambeau 
gave ’em to her great-great-ancestors. ” 

“Speak a little louder,” begged Miss Robin¬ 
son’s voice; “we can’t quite hear thee.” 

Strangest of all strange feelings! To real¬ 
ize that the bright, windy south room lay just 
beside them, with Elspeth and Celia and Miss 
Robinson listening at the whispering-post! 
For the secret stair seemed as remote as the 
shaft of a mine* 

“We ’re going on up,” Loomis called, “to 
see where it goes to.” 

They soon found out, by bumping their heads 
against a solid flooring. Footsteps trampled 
close overhead. 

“Is it here?” said Miss Robinson. 

“Yes!” the voices beneath her answered. 

“This is Martha’s room,” she cried. “It 
was changed from a little storeroom. The 
new floor must have been laid over a secret 
trap-door of some kind.” 

“Are we to see the treasure,” Elspeth 
shouted, “or is it to continue to exist in your 
imaginations ? ’ ’ 

“We want Fogger to see it just where it is,” 
Garth explained* “He might have an idea.” 


224 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

He did. It was almost dusk when he located 
his family at Miss Robinson’s house and ar¬ 
rived there himself. He listened to the tales 
of Garth and Loomis about Inca treasure hid¬ 
den by bold buccaneers in the good old days, 
and to Miss Robinson’s incredulous denials, 
and to his wife’s wondering speculations. Then 
he said, “H’m,” and went into the tunnel 
alone. After one comprehensive look at his 
son, who wanted to go with him, he remarked 
firmly: 

“I think you ’ve done just about enough ex¬ 
ploring for one day.” 

When he came out, dusting his clothes with 
his hands, he merely said, “Ho! ’tis as I 
thought,” and went off to the telephone, leav¬ 
ing the others in a growing fever of impatience 
and wonderment. It grew further when three 
stalwart policemen presented themselves unob¬ 
trusively at Miss Robinson’s door. 

“To catch the buccaneers,” Jim explained. 
“Let’s sit on the porch now, and watch the en¬ 
tertainment—and find out if I’m right.” 

“Oh!” said Loomis suddenly, and, sitting 
down on the porch rail beside Jim, murmured 
a question. 

“Without a doubt,” said Jim. 


THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 225 


There were no songs this evening. The har¬ 
bor was still, reflecting lights in golden spears. 
For a long time it seemed as though Jim’s “en¬ 
tertainment” were not going to be performed. 
Garth, who was tired, was nearly asleep in 
the hammock, when Miss Robinson asked sud¬ 
denly ; 

“Is that that man again? I really wish he ’d 
make use of some other landing-place.” 

“Watch this time and see if he comes out 
past the boat-house,” said Jim in a low voice. 

He did not. Everything was very still. 
There was a faint sound as of a creaking board 
somewhere. Two tall shadows moved at the 
foot of the lawn, and something flashed palely. 

“I dare say, if we listened,” murmured Jim, 
“we’d find that the whispering-post was clink¬ 
ing. ’ ’ 

“You mean—” said Elspeth suddenly. 

“Hush!” said Jim. 

What seemed a very long time went by. The 
water slapped at the sea-wall; the putt-putt of 
a motor-boat drifted in spasmodically. Then 
there was, all at once, a crash in the boat¬ 
house, an oath, an inarticulate growling, the 
report of a revolver like a flash above it all. 
Jim and Loomis were no longer on the piazza. 



226 GAETH, ABLE SEAMAN 

A cheery voice came up from the water-front: 

“You *re sure some little detective, Looten- 
ant!” 

“It was perfectly obvious,” Jim explained a 
little later. “Of course your theories about 
pirate treasure were wild. The minute I saw 
the stuff I perceived that most of it was mod¬ 
ern—platinum settings and all that sort of bus¬ 
iness—therefore probably recently stolen. 
Coupled with our mysterious water-front 
friend, it was as plain as a pikestaff. How he 
knew about the passage remains to be seen. 
The chief will have that out of him.” 

And what about the Rochambeau coffee-serv¬ 
ice? There it stood in the middle of the 
table, blackened but beautiful, gleaming dully 
in the lamplight. Whether it had been stolen 
by some long-ago servant who had hidden it 
and been prevented from taking it away, was 
a matter of conjecture; but there it was, ma¬ 
jestic and magnificent, for everybody to wonder 
at. 

“Well,” said Jim to his son, whom he in¬ 
sisted upon carrying home, “it strikes me you 
literally fell into a fortune, old man.” 


THE SECRET OF THE STAIR 227 

Jim was able to enlighten his family further 
next day when he returned from the police 
station. 

“Our pirate found the passage,” he told 
them, “when he was sleeping in the boat-house 
early this spring—being out of work. He fol¬ 
lowed it up and found the coffee-service, which 
stirred an evil idea in his mind. Of course 
no one was living in the house just then. Ha! 
There you are! Mysterious disappearance of 
priceless gems from fashionable residents of 
Newport! Many villas robbed! But the thief 
doesn’t leave town. Stone Bridge watched. 
All exits from island watched. Baffled police 
about to give up search. Meanwhile thief stores 
gems in secret stairway, planning to make get¬ 
away by motor-boat when all suspicion had 
died. (By the way, our friend was going to 
skip last night with the whole business; he 
heard us talking just as much as we heard him 
tinkling, and it began to alarm him.) So 
there it is! Intrepid youth falls down entrance 
to secret passage, discovering the loot and en¬ 
abling gallant naval officer to make deductions 
worthy of a Sherlock Holmes. Our pirate is 
in irons, and to Garth belongs the glory—for 


228 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

not watching his step when putting away shel¬ 
lac!” 

Miss Robinson could not help thinking that 
it was one of the most extraordinary adven¬ 
tures that had ever befallen the old house. She 
polished the Rochambeau coffee-service until 
it shone; and from its rightful place in the 
shell-cabinet it gleamed gently, guarding more 
than it could tell of a century’s oblivion in the 
secret staircase. 


CHAPTER XX 


GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 

T HE navy played a large part in New¬ 
port’s affairs. A vast number of extra 
men were still quartered at the Training Sta¬ 
tion, and sailors swarmed in the streets every 
liberty day. Destroyers had been in and out, 
and Garth, during their brief appearances, 
had lived with a telescope at his eye in a des¬ 
perate effort to decipher their constant wig¬ 
wagging. 

One glorious afternoon of blue above and 
below, the Ailouros lay off and on beneath the 
Training Station slopes, while her occupants 
watched manoeuvers ashore. Thousands of 
apprentice seamen marched and counter¬ 
marched on the smooth sweep of green below 
the commanding fagade of the War College, 
white uniforms gleaming, bayonets winking. 
The band at the foot of the hill crashed out 
swinging music; at the head of the slope the 

admiral and his staff reviewed the drill. 

229 


230 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

When, at the end, “Nancy Lee” echoed tre¬ 
mendously from a thousand throats as the men 
marched singing from the parade-ground, 
Garth nearly went overboard with enthusiasm. 
The Ailouros tacked all the way home to the 
tune of “Yeo ho, we go across the sea!” 

‘ ‘ The destroyers are coming in to-morrow, ’ ’ 
Jim declared that night. “The whole out¬ 
fit. My old 026 will be in, Pern. We 11 have 
to try to get out to her.” 

“How many? Oh, hurray!” said Garth. 

“The whole flotilla. There 11 be a lot of 
bing-banging y I suppose, when they arrive. 
Our old friend the Billington is the mother- 
ship, as usual. You 11 be able to welcome her 
like a long-lost cousin,” 

The Billington, with her brood of destroy¬ 
ers, had hovered at times about Pettasantuck 
Bay in the Silver Shoal days. 

“You might sail out to meet ’em,” Jim sug¬ 
gested further. “It’s rather a fine sight.” 

“We could, couldn’t we!” Garth cried. 
“What a lark!” 

“You can be a sort of welcome committee 
sent out to extend them the freedom of the 
bay, as ’twere,” Jim said. 



GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 231 

The destroyers could not have found a more 
perfect day for their arrival. The harbor was 
scintillating cobalt with a fine fresh wind blow¬ 
ing roundly, and billowing clouds of purple and 
pearl marching above. 

Celia was eager for the sail because Loomis 
was—but partly lured, too, by the dancing 
water and the summoning wind. She still was 
inclined to wear suede pumps sailing, but she 
disposed herself in a boat now in a much less 
lubberly fashion than at first. Garth was, on 
the whole, encouraged by her progress. She 
no longer spoke of the “back” and “front” of 
a boat, and usually remembered to refer to the 
Ailouros as “she.” Celia was not much en¬ 
couraged, however, by Loomis’s progress. In¬ 
deed he had made none, so far as remembering 
him self went. Apart from that momentary 
flicker of searching wonder when he had sung 
“The Sally Gardens,” he h'ad given no sign 
of recognition of her or of past happenings. 
He seemed to prefer Garth’s company to that 
of any one else, and was always steadier and 
happier and less “bothered” with him. Per¬ 
haps this was because Garth never expected 
him to be anybody but John Loomis, while 




232 GABTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

every one else, unconsciously, couldn’t help 
thinking all the time that he ought to he Wyeth 
Merriman. 

By the time the Ailouros reached the outer 
harbor, the smoke of the destroyers was to be 
seen blurring the seaward horizon. They were 
coming in file, the Billington steaming ahead. 
The Ailouros flitted down to meet her, and 
stood off and on, making short tacks, while 
the cleaving, curving bow of the cruiser cut 
nearer and nearer. 

“Don’t go so close,” Celia begged. i ‘Sup¬ 
pose it ran into us! ” 

“By the time she gets here, the Ailouros 
won’t be,” Loomis laughed. 

Garth was standing in front of the mast, 
holding to a stay. He flourished his hand to 
the oncoming ship, and various white hats were 
wagged in return. At the instant when Loomis 
was preparing to go about and run down away 
from the cruiser, the Billington loosed the thun¬ 
der of her guns and fired the first volley of 
her salute—square across the Ailouros. It 
was a terrific, shattering detonation, that tore 
the silence to shreds. 

And Loomis, his face gone suddenly white 
and blank, beat strangely at the air and lurched 


GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 233 

sideways against the tiller, inert. The Ailou- 
ros, thus abandoned, behaved wildly. The 
sheet rattled out, the boom swung wide; then, 
as the wind caught the sail aback, she jibed vio¬ 
lently. At that, the limp figure of Loomis 
rolled to the bottom of the cockpit, and Celia 
went upon her knees beside him, whiter than 
he. 

It had all happened with the quickness of a 
thunderclap. The force of the jibe had nearly 
flung Garth from his perch in front of the 
mast. With an eye on the uncertain move¬ 
ments of the boom—the Ailouros was yawing 
crazily—he wriggled over the hatch and 
reached the tiller in two leaps. Loomis lay as 
if dead in the bottom of the boat; Celia 
crouched beside him. But even if she had not 
been utterly engrossed with him she would have 
been of no use, for she didn’t know the sheet 
from the mooring-cable. Left alone, the Ailou¬ 
ros could not possibly have escaped destruc¬ 
tion. The Billington was too close upon her 
for even the order of “Full speed astern” to 
check the great momentum of the swift cruiser 
in time. 

Hardly knowing what he did, yet aware that 
it was the only thing to do, Garth flung over 


234 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

the helm, hooked his knee around the tiller, 
hauled on the sheet with more strength than 
was his—and jibed the Ailouros again. A lit¬ 
tle water flashed in over the side, the boat 
righted herself with a shudder, swept round, 
and tore off with a rush of bubbles. The great 
gray flank of the Billing ton loomed by right 
above; her bow-wash made the Ailouros bob 
and pitch. She was slowing down; the force 
of her way was only now diminishing, when 
her keen bow had already passed over the spot 
where the cat-boat had been. 

A spontaneous and roaring cheer broke from 
the side of the Billington suddenly. An officer 
shouted: 

“Well done! Do you want help?” 

“No, thanks! All right now!” Garth 
shouted in return, astonished to find that some¬ 
thing funny was the matter with his voice. 

The Ailouros was drawing away; the cruiser 
picked up speed. Behind her the destroyers 
steamed grimly, low, angular, gray shapes. 
Garth took a turn over a cleat with the sheet, 
and, for the first time, looked at Loomis. He 
was muttering in a fixed monotone: 

“Now we ’ve got ’em—got ’em—one more— 
one more—over the top and we’ve—got ’em—” 




GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 235 

Presently, after a time of silence, he opened 
his eyes and said: 

“I’m glad you ’re here, Celia. I wanted to 
have you come. ...” 

“Pm here—Wyeth,” Celia said, low and 
steadily. She had scarcely been aware of the 
great peril they had all been in. 

“I wanted to see you—so much. I’m afraid 
—I’m finished.” 

“You ’re not finished,” she said; “oh, 
you ’re just beginning! Look up, dear—look- 
do you see where you are?” 

“Sky,” he murmured, “good sky. What’s 
that? It—this isn’t mud, is it—nor—” His 
hand searched vaguely the wet flooring of the 
cockpit. 

“It’s the Ailouros,” said Garth. 

“Hullo,” he said weakly, “that’s—that’s 
Garth? Oh, I can’t—something hurts—” 

“Don’t try,” Celia breathed. “Just rest 
now. You ’re trying to be two people at once, 
dear. Don’t try to understand, now.” 

Jim, who had come home for lunch, stood on 
his piazza fingering a marine-glass. 

* i Time they were in, ’ ’ he said aloud. 4 ‘ Hul¬ 
lo, there she is now!” as the peak of the Ail- 



236 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

our os’ sail gleamed behind the breakwater. 
When she slipped out past the lighthouse, he 
leveled the glass. After a moment of fixed 
gazing, he called suddenly to his wife: 

“Elspeth! Pern’s sailing her—and I can’t 
see a sign of Loomis. Just Celia's head stick¬ 
ing up over the coaming.” 

“What!” Elspeth was beside him in a flash, 
reaching for the glass. 

“Can’t imagine what could have happened,” 
Jim murmured. “Loomis is n’t the one to fall 
overboard; if by any remote chance the boom 
had caught him the others would certainly have 
hauled him aboard. Would they have landed 
him for any reason, Elspeth?” 

“I can’t think of anything,” she said. “He 
might be ill, and lying in the bottom of the boat. 
Perhaps he’s just lying there anyway—for fun, 
resting. ’ ’ 

“Bah,” said Jim, “you don’t lie in the 
cockpit for fun; he’d be on the hatch, if that 
were it. And why should he be ill? He’s no 
reason to be. By Jove, our son is sailing to 
suit the queen’s taste! The glass, Elspeth; 
he's going to come about.” 

The Ailouros ran up into the wind, the boom 
swung over, and she went about and was off 


GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 237 

on the other tack with hardly a second’s loss 
of way. 

“Deuced neat!” ejaculated Jim. “Els- 
peth, I’d no idea he was so really competent. 
Got his knee against the tiller and hauling 
away on the sheet for dear life. Here, take a 
look!’ ’ 

“He oughtn’t to be doing that,” Garth’s 
mother murmured, gazing through the glass; 
“that’s heavy work, Jim.” 

“I ’ll go out and help him at the buoy,” Jim 
said. “No, I can’t, either; the Cyrnba ’s out 
there, of course.” 

“Run to Miss Robinson’s,” Elspeth sug¬ 
gested, quickly ; i 1 she ’ll let you take one of her 
boats.” 

Jim was off before she had finished speak¬ 
ing. Miss Robinson very soon appeared on the 
Pemberleys’ piazza, and together she and Els¬ 
peth walked down to the end of the pier to 
watch the incoming boat. Jim was half-way 
between Miss Robinson’s wharf and the buoy, 
rowing with long strokes. 

Garth missed the buoy at his first try, and 
reached off for another run to it. He had ap¬ 
parently roused Celia to help, for she stood pre¬ 
cariously in the bow, clinging to a stay and 


238 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

looking intent but not very useful. She 
crouched down and made a snatch for the buoy 
after the Ailouros’s bow had shot beyond it; 
but by that time Jim was there. He caught 
the nose of the cat-boat, made her fast, and 
climbed aboard. The watchers on the pier saw 
him bend down to look at something in the cock¬ 
pit. He stood talking to Celia. Then the sail 
came down. 

“Do you suppose Mr. Loomis is lying there,’’ 
Miss Robinson wondered, “and that’s what 
your husband was looking at?” 

“Oh, look!” cried Elspeth. 

For Jim and Celia were helping Loomis him¬ 
self into the skiff. He was very pale and 
seemed to be somewhat uncertain on his feet, 
but he was smiling—a queer, dazed smile. 
Once in the rowboat, Celia sat beside him in the 
stern and took his head upon her shoulder. 

“Can—can it have happened?” Elspeth haz¬ 
arded. 

“I wonder if that could possibly be,” Miss 
Robinson murmured. 

Jim had lifted his son into the Cymba. Tow¬ 
ing the other rowboat astern, he pulled for the 
pier. 

“Is John hurt?” Elspeth cried. 


GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 239 

But no one in the skiff said anything. It 
was not until they were on the pier that Celia 
spoke. She stood looking up at Loomis, half 
supporting him. He still smiled his strange, 
wondering smile, and now and then covered his 
eyes for a moment with his hand. Celia con¬ 
quered her quivering voice. 

“Elspeth,” she cried with a tremulous bra¬ 
vado, “this—this is my fiance—Wyeth Merri- 
man!’ ’ 

“But he r s John Loomis, too,” Garth said 
hastily, “aren’t you?” 

Merriman spoke very slowly. “Yes—I’m 
—I suppose I am. It ’s so curious. So very 
curious. To remember it all, and to—to have 
had Celia all the time, and remember that, and 
yet not to have known. I—I think perhaps 
I’d better lie down.” 

“I think you had,” Elspeth said. “When 
you wake up you ’ll know just who you 
are.” 

They all moved slowly up the pier. 

“But how did it happenf” That was what 
Jim and Elspeth wanted to know, after Merri¬ 
man was tucked up in the dim coolness of his 
room. 

“The cannon,” said Celia; “we were so close 



240 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

—it crashed out just over us. He simply 
crumpled up. When he could speak at all, he 
seemed to think he was in the trenches. His 
mind seemed to begin working again just where 
it stopped when he was shell-shocked in 
France. ” 

4 ‘Yet he remembers being John Loomis ?” 
Elspeth asked. 

“After a little while, yes. He can’t quite 
understand, yet, but it keeps growing clearer.” 

Jim had been pondering. Now he asked sud¬ 
denly : 

“Was he steering when it happened?” 

“Yes,” Celia said. “He just fell away from 
the rudder.” 

“The tiller,” murmured Garth, ever vigi¬ 
lant. He had let “cannon” pass. 

“What happened then?” Jim pursued. 

“I really don’t know, I’m afraid,” Celia 
confessed. “The battle-ship was very near— 
coming straight toward us. I had told Wyeth 
I thought we were too close, before it all hap¬ 
pened.” 

“Where were you, Pern?” Jim asked, lazily 
drawing at his pipe. 

“In front of the mast,” said Garth. 


GAETH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 241 

“Hmph! Handy place l” his father re¬ 
marked. ‘ ‘ What did the boat do when Loomis 
—Merriman—whoever he is—went to pieces 1 9 9 

‘‘She jibed like tits,” Garth declared. “I 
nearly went overboard. The Billington was 
just going to run us down, so I went aft and 
jibed again and got out of the way.” 

4 ‘You went aft and jibed again/’ Jim re¬ 
peated. ‘ ‘ How near was the Billington? 9 9 

Garth looked about him for a measure. 

“About as far as from here to the sea-wall,” 
he said. 

“My child!” protested Miss Eobinson. 

“You must have gone aft rather rapidly,” 
Jim commented. “What made you think that 
jibing her was the thing to do?” 

“It was the only thing to do,” Garth said. 
“The men on the Billington cheered us. It 
was ’citing.” 

“It must have been,” said Jim dryly. 

“I never even heard them,” said Celia. 

Elspeth sat silent. She exchanged one long, 
deep look with her husband. 

“I must say, Garth,” said Miss Esther Eob¬ 
inson, rising to go, “thee’s surely shown thy¬ 
self to be a remarkably good sailor.” 


242 GARTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

That evening Wyeth Merriman sat up in a 
wicker chair and pieced things out. He had 
been alone with Celia for an hour, and his 
patchwork of memories seemed to be nearly 
put together. Physically, he was weak with 
shock. Mentally, he was rebuilding everything 
eagerly and strongly. He looked about him 
suddenly with a great wonder. 

“You blessed people!” he cried. “What 
ever made you so gentle and so loyal to John 
Loomis? (Good heavens, Pemberley, I believe 
I still have half your things!) Why, what 
an ass you must all have been thinking me. 
I—” 

“Not one bit,” Elspeth said. “John Loomis 
was such a dear dreamer. Don’t let him go 
away altogether!” 

Celia smiled. “I knew Wyeth Merriman be¬ 
fore,” she said. “I promise you that all you 
loved in John Loomis will be left.” 

“He didn’t have much wit, though,” said 
Merriman, “or he’d have fallen in love with 
Celia Hampton all over again!” 

They all laughed then. Jim had been rather 
quiet since he had returned from the station 
that afternoon. He rose now and looked across 
at his son. 


GARTH PEMBERLEY, A.B. 243 

“Let’s go out and take a look at the ships 
before you turn in,” he suggested. 

Garth followed his father out into the cool, 
soft darkness, and stood beside him at the 
porch rail. Jim seemed very tall indeed in his 
white summer uniform—a looming pale figure. 
His cigarette glowed and waned in the dark. 
Out in the black harbor the flashing signal- 
lights of the destroyers winked their messages 
back and forth, till it seemed as though the 
night were full of giant fireflies. 

“Been talking to the skipper of the Billing- 
ton,” Jim said abruptly. “Saw him at the 
station this afternoon. He says that was a 
near thing this morning.” 

“I guess it was,” Garth agreed. “She was 
coming rather fast.” 

“She was coming very fast,” his father said; 
“so fast that she couldn’t have slowed or 
changed course in time. He says you did a 
very pretty piece of seamanship . 9 ’ 

“Eogger,” said Garth uneasily. 

“Well?” Jim prompted. 

“I was simply frightened to death,” Garth 

confessed. 

‘ ‘ Of course you were , 99 his father said. ‘ ‘ The 
point is, that you did the only thing that could 


244 GABTH, ABLE SEAMAN 

save the boat at the only moment it could be 
done to save her. Wherefore you proved your¬ 
self competent to meet an emergency and meet 
it well;—that *s all.” 

“The Aiiouros was frightened, too,” Garth 
said. “She yawed all over the place. It was 
awful, Fogger. I never thought of it before, 
somehow—the way she needs us all the time.” 

“The best boat is helpless without a hand 
at the helm,” Jim said. “I dare say she was 
pretty glad to feel that tiller go over.” 

“She’s an old wompus,” Garth declared; “I 
thought I ’d break myself, hauling that sheet. ’ ’ 

“Um,” said Jim. “Never talk to me again 
about your being ‘ unseaworthy, ’ or whatever it 
is you think you are.” 

The familiar, friendly water sounds mur¬ 
mured through the darkness. The awning 
stirred perpetually with a muffled flapping in 
the night wind from the sea. Jim put his hands 
suddenly upon his son’s shoulders. He was 
silent for a moment, and then in a queer, quick, 
low voice he said: 

“Garth Pemberley—A.B.” 





































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